Team working in the real world Units United Conference 29th June 2009 Solution focused consultancy, coaching, facilitation and research Steve Onyett www.steveonyett.co.uk Thought for the day.

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Transcript Team working in the real world Units United Conference 29th June 2009 Solution focused consultancy, coaching, facilitation and research Steve Onyett www.steveonyett.co.uk Thought for the day.

Slide 1

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 2

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 3

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 4

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 5

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 6

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 7

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 8

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 9

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 10

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 11

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 12

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 13

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 14

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 15

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 16

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
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Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 17

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 18

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 19

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 20

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 21

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 22

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 23

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 24

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 25

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 26

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 27

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 28

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 29

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

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www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 30

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 31

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

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Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 32

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 33

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 34

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 35

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 36

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 37

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 38

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 39

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
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Steve Onyett
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Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 40

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 41

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 42

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 43

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 44

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 45

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 46

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

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Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

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Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 47

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 48

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 49

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 50

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 51

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 52

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 53

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 54

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 55

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 56

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 57

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 58

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 59

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 60

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 61

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

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Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

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Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
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Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 62

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
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facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

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Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
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Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
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Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

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Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
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Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
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Steve Onyett
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Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
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Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 63

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 64

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk


Slide 65

Team working in
the real world
Units United Conference
29th June 2009

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Thought for the day. Today
Programme. Radio 4. 26th
February 2009

•“Here is the gift

of relationship.
It lies at the
very core of what
it is to be
human.”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Start with what builds
relationship

The artist is Mel Gittridge, and this image was exhibited as
part of Expressions, a touring display of art by people who
have experienced mental or emotional problems- this picture
captures the idea of environments where people can take
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
power, supported by other environments where people can
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
take power.

What whole system?
Within
CAMHS

Family,
friends,
neighbours
The practitioner
The team

Moving
to adulthood

The local mental health service
Housing, employment,
leisure, benefits, substance
misuse, learning difficulty,
sensory impairment, etc.

Primary-specialist care
Health and social care

Hospital and community care
Statutory and “social purpose”
provision
Health and education

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 2

It is about “deepening and
broadening” public service
• “The point is not to
consult more, or involve
people more in decisions;
it is to encourage them to
use the human skills and
experience they have to
help deliver public or
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 10-11
voluntary services”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Co-production and working
from strengths
• “… people are defined entirely by
their needs and so those needs
become the only asset they have. Noone should be surprised when people
then behave in ways that perpetuate
such needs” (11).
• “When ..assets are deliberately
ignored or sidelined they atrophy”.
(11)
• “Co-production demands that public
service staff shift from fixers who
focus on problems to enablers who
focus on abilities. … This role is
not consultancy,
recognised or rewarded within
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
management
structures that
are
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
currently in place”.(13)

“Front-line staff are
essential to delivery and
empowerment...
• Their morale is as

important as client
morale. Yet in practice,
the participation that
they are asked to extend
to clients is often not
extended to them”.

New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the core economy.2008. 13

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“System alignment”
• Allow yourselves with others to
be moved by stories
• Give wide and shared exposure to
the lived experience of people
who use your service
• Envision the future together and
ambitiously
• Don’t be coy about the love you
put into your work
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• Clear and shared objectives
• Members who have to work
closely together to achieve the
objectives of the team
• This interdependency includes
users and their supporters
• Members who have different and
clearly defined roles within
the team
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Human systems
Make a move
Follow a move

Moving

Opposing

Observe and make
comments intended
to move the group
forward and connect
ideas

Following

Bystanding

Oppose a
move

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Take them away and you
get….
No direction
Mover
No completion

Follower

No perspective
Opposer

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

No correction

Bystander

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Stalemate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dictate
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Let’s not
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hall of
mirrors
Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Dream team
Mover

Follower

Opposer

Bystander

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Real teams have..
• The minimum number of team
members required to get the
job done
• Opportunities to review the
performance of the team and
how it could be improved
• A team identity, in that
others can recognise it as
a team
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Effective teams
have…..
• Good processes for decision
making
• Norms for excellence
• Support for innovation- both
rhetorical and practical,
including..
• Defended time out to review
what it is trying to achieve,
how it is going about it and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
what needs to change
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Hackman’s five trip
wires
• Describe the performing unit as a team but
continuing to manage members as
individuals.
• Fail to exercise appropriate authority over
the team - leave it to clarify what it
does.
• Neglect internal structures for operational
management
• Fail to provide organisational supports in
the form of rewards, training, information,
and the material resources required to get
the job done.
• focused
Assume
that team members already haveSteve
all Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching,the
facilitation
and research they need to work www.steveonyett.co.uk
competence
well in

Trusting
Relationships
Conflicting Needs

Shared Vision

Pressures/Stress

Shared Values

Change/Uncertainty/Dishonesty
Unclear
Communications
Complex/Poor Data
Lack of Time /
Prior Experience

Distrusting
Relationships

Integrity
Clear
Communications
Reliable Information

Familiarity

Source: Richard Lauve, MD (VHA Inc.)

Appreciative Inquiry
Is about developing the competence to
CHOOSE a way of thinking

• “Appreciative Inquiry is the cooperative search
for the best in people, their organizations, and
the world around them.”
• “It involves systematic discovery of what gives
a system 'life' when it is most effective and
capable in economic, ecological and human
terms.”
From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Solution focus/appreciative inquiryexploring what works so that we can
do more of it

We manifest what we focus on
and “we grow toward what we
persistently ask questions
about”
or

What we talk about gets
bigger!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It works to build the
positive core of the
organisations involved.
• Organisations need a lot
less fixing and a lot more
affirmation.
• Appreciation builds
relationships, collective
intelligence, and freedom
to innovate

From “An opportunity to learn more about Appreciative Inquiry” Presentation by Anne Radford

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“The Power of
Appreciation..
• ..rests with its selfreinforcing and self-generative
capacity”
Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1999

• This requires inclusion, safety
in participation and good
communication =
• Effective team working and
leadership
Steve Onyett
• focused
Teams
are where this is modelled
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
and enacted

Working well with
living systems
means working well
with “complexity”
– See for example –
• Bob Hudson. (2006). Whole systems working- a Guide and
Discussion paper. CSIP-ICN
• Jake Chapman. (2004). Systems failure. Why
governments must learn to think differently. London:
Demos
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Simple

Following a
Recipe

Recipe is essential
Recipes are tested to

assure replicability of
later efforts

No particular

expertise; knowing
how to cook increases
success

Complicated
Building a
Moon Rocket
Formulae are critical

and necessary

Sending one rocket

increases assurance
that next will be ok

High level of expertise

in many specialized
fields & coordination

Complex

Raising a
Child

• Formulae have only
a limited application
• Raising one child
gives no assurance
of success with the
next
• Expertise can help
but is not sufficient

Recipes produce

Rockets similar in

• Every child is
unique

Certainty of same

High degree of

• Uncertainty of
outcome remains

standard products
results every time

critical ways

certainty of outcome

From - Plsek, P. “Complexity, culture and
large systems change” presentation

Source: Brenda Zimmerman, PhD

Questions?
Chapman, 2004)

(after

• Are we spending too much
time trying to apply
complicated solutions to
complex problems?
• What approach would we
adopt if we accepted that
systems cannot be
controlled nor their
behaviour predicted?
• focused
What
might we need to doSteve Onyett
Solution
consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
differently?

Build collective understanding of
what working in complex systems
really means
• Small changes can have big
effects
• ..and big changes very little
effect
• Emergence- the whole is
greater than the sum of the
parts
• Tolerance of uncertainty and
flexibility
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research
• Recognising the futilitywww.steveonyett.co.uk
of

The pointlessness of
control
from Jenny Rogers “Influencing Skills”

• You can’t force people to work
effectively on something they disagree
with.
• Organisations are so complex and
subject to so many diverse influences
that it is pointless trying to control
them.
• Distance from most senior to most
junior makes it unlikely that control
can be exercised over that stretch
• Much control is unnecessary -where
there is openness and willingness to
give feedback
• Control
reduces risk taking- a
Steve Onyett
Solution
focused consultancy,
necessary
precondition for the www.steveonyett.co.uk
coaching,
facilitation and research
innovation on which organisations

•People’s ability to
stay the same will
always be greater
than our ability to
make them different
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Push and
exhortation (nor
even resources!)
from leaders and
policy makers can
be counter-

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with your
stakeholders- what
is their
•Readiness to change?
•Confidence to change?
•Judgement of the
importance of change?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Respectfully consider
these cells and provide
information to inform
Advantages

Disadvantages

Change

+

-

No change

-

+

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

What implications of more
ecological thinking?

•Change needs to
happen bottom-up but
the right conditions
need to be created.
• …like gardening, or
throwing a party?
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Allowing solutions to
emerge by:
–encouraging rich
interaction, removing
barriers and oppressive
controls
–giving space and time,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
–not
over
specifying
coaching, facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Working with complexity
values
• Valuing multiple
perspectives
• Using multiple
approaches that make
effective use of
experience,
experimentation, freedom
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
to
innovate
and
working
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Law of the
Situation
•Leadership is transient

and contextual
•Where knowledge and
experience are needed the
person who can is the
right person to do it.
•Not all leadership should
be determined by position
power yet people with
authority
should
be
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
prepared
it.
coaching,
facilitation and researchto exercise www.steveonyett.co.uk

Subsidiarity
• Decision making should be
located as closely as
possible to the place where
actions are taken.
• This means addressing the
flight from authority
• .. and helping people love
their monkeys!
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you do not

fill your
leadership space,
voids appear, and
in voids bad
things happen”

Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
Hugh
Martyn
and Robert Scurr quoting William
Calley on
coaching,
facilitation
and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk
his lack of leadership in the Mai Lay massacre in

The essence of leadership
and management
• …is the creation of
environments in which
people can be creative..
Where they can exercise
power to achieve outcomes
valued by patients/users,
their supports, and other
key stakeholders.
Steve
Solution
focused
consultancy,
•
This
is
usually
a
team
coaching, facilitation and research

Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More “soft stuff” emphasis
on working through others
• Leaders with more faith in
other people than they have
in themselves (and they have
a lot of faith in
themselves!)
•
More
concerned
with
With acknowledgement to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe of www.realworld-group.com
connectedness and
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
inclusiveness
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

“New paradigm” approach to
leadership
• More concerned with vision
• More concerned with
improvement
• Less concerned with “Great
man” models of leadership
• Striving for excellence
through optimism, openness
and
personal
humility
With
acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

“Transformational”
leadership- roots
• James MacGregor Burns
transformation as that which
turns followers into leaders
and leaders into moral agents.
• Transformational leadership
occurs when people elevate each
other into a higher level of
motivation and morality.
• Thus inextricably linked with
the social meaning that people
Steve Onyett
Solution focused
consultancy,
attach
to their work.
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour
• Positive Emotional Climate =
“an environment where
managers take into account
the emotional needs and
personal growth of employees
and encourage the sharing of
positive emotions”
• Leadership practices that
promote “positive emotional
climate” associated with
company gains in revenue,
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
growth
and
outcome.
Ozcelik
et
coaching, facilitation and research
al, 2008

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leadership as an ethical
endeavour

•PEC
associated
with less
cynicism and
more

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Research using the Team
Leadership Questionnaire

•“Showing genuine
concern” has the
biggest impact on
motivation.
–Being interested in
your needs and
aspirations
and
how
With acknowledgement
to Bev Alimo-Metcalfe
of www.realworld-group.com
Steve Onyett
things feel for you.

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

The importance of
authenticity
•Leaders lead most
effectively when they
are being themselves and
being true to
themselves.
•Authentic leadership is
about, “being yourself-

more – with skill”

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Highlights from “Host
Leadership: Towards a new yet
ancient metaphor” by
Mark McKergow PhD MBA
Director, sfwork - The Centre
for Solutions Focus at Work
[email protected],
www.sfwork.com
Forthcoming in the

International Journal of
Leadership in Public Services
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the hero
metaphor
• The hero leader is
seen as all-knowing
and the followers alldependent;
• The illusion of
control
• The homogeneous
imagery of the
followers - are we

subjects or sheep!

• The willingness of the
hero (warrior, king,
even shepherd) to die
Solution focused
consultancy,
in the
act of saving
coaching,the
facilitation
and research
flock

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Shortcomings of the servant
metaphor
• The richness of the
metaphor is not
obvious. Your waiter or

Jeeves?
• The image of servant is
not a compelling one to
those (for example
women and ethnic
minorities) who are
Solution focused consultancy,
traditionally
cast
in
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Leader as Host, Host as
Leader
Host

Hero

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Servant

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Warren Bennis on Gladstone and
Disraeli

• If you had dinner with William
Gladstone, you were left
thinking “That Gladstone is the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around.”
• But when you had dinner with
Benjamin Disraeli, you were
left thinking, “I’m the
wittiest, the most intelligent,
the most charming person
around!”
• Gladstone shone but Disraeli
created an environment where
others could shine. The latter
is the more powerful form of
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
leadership, an adventure in
coaching, facilitation and research
which the leader is privileged www.steveonyett.co.uk

Advantages of the host
metaphor
• It’s an everyday image
• Host and Guest are co-defining
• Hosting is an activity, rather
than a defining characteristic
of a person
• Hosting gives a definite feel
of some responsibility for the
success of the event
• The role of host can involve
behaving
as
total
hero
or
Steve Onyett
Solution focused consultancy,
servant
coaching,absolute
facilitation and research
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Elements of host
leadership

•The four
balances + 1
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Responseability

•Defin
ing
the
event
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Responding
to what
happens

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Coparticipation

•Engag
e and
provid
e
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Join in
along
with
everyone
else
Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Gate-opener

•Protect
boundarie
s

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

• Encourage
new
connections

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Principle of Alpha and
Omega

•Be
•Be
the
the
firs
last
The t
host is both the first and the
last – Arabic proverb
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

th
5

The
principle?
•Front
•Backstage
stage
work.
work.
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Parting comments on
rethinking leadership
• Ask yourself

Paul E. Plsek, 2008

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

It’s all about wellbeing

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk

•“If you think you
are too small to be
effective
…you have never been
in bed with a
mosquito”
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
Betty-Reese
www.steveonyett.co.uk

Steve Onyett

Thank you!- [email protected]
Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

www.steveonyett.co.uk

Sources
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Iles, P. & Macaulay, M. (2007) Putting principles into practice:
developing ethical leadership in local government. International Journal
of Leadership in Public Services, 3(3), 15-28.
Ozcelik, H., Langton, N., & Aldrich. (2008). Doing well and doing good.
Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23(3), 186-203.
Ham. C. (2008) “Health Care Commissioning in the International Context:
Lessons from experience and evidence”. 2008.HSMC
Ham, C. (2008)“Competition and integration in the English NHS”. BMJ.
2008. 336. 805-807
Welsh, T. & Pringle, M. (2001). Social capital. Trusts need to recreate
trust BMJ. 2001 July 28; 323(7306): 177–178.
New Economics Foundation. Co-Production. A manifesto for growing the
core economy.2008
www.icn.csip.org.uk/leadership
www.leadershipnet-icn.org.uk – for people involved in leadership and
teamwork development
www.steveonyett.co.uk – see page on solution focus for links to a range
of other resources of solution focussed working.

[email protected]

Solution focused consultancy,
coaching, facilitation and research

Steve Onyett
www.steveonyett.co.uk