Recently I had some nice feedback from a group that I had facilitated a workshop with. The group had undergone significant change and it had proved painful. So painful to a point where the staff attitude survey showed the group were very disengaged and informal feedback showed they really did not like coming to work.
I had worked with them using narrative and issues identification, issues mapping using the Cynefin framework which is an excellent decision making and understanding tool. As a result they designed some probes and experiments they wanted to carry out. The important point of all of this is that the issues they identified were their issues and the ideas for resolution i.e the probes were their ideas…….thereby empowering a group who were pretty disempowered.
The feedback was that they were trying out the experiments and it was starting to make a difference in that people felt as though they were no longer being tossed around and that they were feeling so much more positive about being part of the group and being at work.
It is amazing what we can do if we listen to our people and allow them to take some responsibility and control for their own lives.