Let us draw inspiration from the ones who stand out in a good way!
Is it okay if we …?!?
If you are a mid-level manager or a team member in an organization, you will probably have caught yourself thinking or maybe even asking this question when you came up against a restriction in your ability to do something you thought could make a difference in your organization.
You are far from alone. For years, this has been a classic phenomenon with a detrimental impact on workplace well-being.
This simply seems to be the expectation in our hierarchical organizations – we are encouraged to look to the next level up and ask for permission before we act. The drawback is not just bottleneck issues and organizational paralysis. It is also the lack of well-being among the employees, who are held back and prevented from fully applying their professional competence, capacity and innovative talent to carry out their core task. It also subjects mid-level managers to an unreasonable cross pressure of demands and expectations from below, above, the sides and the outside environment and making them responsible for pulling it all together, reconciling paradoxical demands, generating well-being, motivation, development, coherence and meaning, being top management’s eyes and ears, championing the employees’ needs and handling a wide range of other tasks.
But what if there was another approach, one where you don’t always have to ask permission? Which let us to move towards self-leadership and facilitative management, with the primary goal of making it easy for employees to act on their professional insights and competence and gave them greater latitude to organize their work in a way that results in coherence, meaning and well-being for all.
Training course in facilitative management
Naturally, I hope that you will find my blog post inspiring. If you do, you and your colleagues might want to take a look at the training course I offer in facilitative management, an approach that, in practice, has not just been found to generate increased well-being, meaning and job satisfaction but is also fundamentally essential for retaining the next generations of employees.
The next course starts in January 2024. You can take the course yourself or arrange an in-house course for yourself and the other members of your company’s management team.
Read what Anne Dorte from Erhvervshus Sydjylland (Business Centre South Jutland) took away from the course, which she took together with her management team:
‘In spring 2023, I had the privilege of attending Helen Eriksen’s training course in facilitative leadership. It is one of the most rewarding training courses I have ever attended, in part thanks to the combination of joint modules, circle coaching and individual leadership coaching. The joint modules gave us in-depth insight into the latest new leadership research and practices. This was important, as trends are showing that we are currently moving from a growth paradigm to a paradigm of well-being and holistic thinking. In the joint modules, we explored leadership styles, decision-making processes, safe psychological environment, self-leadership and many other topics. Circle coaching was an important element of the course. As a fairly new leadership team with different levels of experience, we were able to build a common frame of reference and shared value base. These rewarding discussions help to enhance our future collaboration in the team. Individual leadership coaching gave each of us the opportunity to explore our personal challenges and leadership style. Each coaching session was a source of new insights, and we never left a circle or individual coaching session without summarizing valuable key points that we can use in our continuing development. The course inspired me to understand the organization as an organism, where everyone is connected. We need to cocreate, and what we do has to have meaning and pursue and create value for the individuals involved. A key learning point from the course was the importance of mindfulness as an efficient leadership tool. Mindfulness helps us meet challenges with openness, empathize with employees and make intuitive decisions in a complex world. The quality of the course derives in great part from Helen Eriksen’s unique personality and professional approach. Her focused presence, professional competence and ability to relate theory to practice as well as her energy, empathy and infections laughter create an inspiring and valuable learning experience. With my warm recommendations, I encourage other leaders to take this course in facilitative leadership. Helen is a great source of inspiration, who gives the participants tools for navigating in the complex world of modern leadership.’
You can read more about my course in facilitative management here.
With this link to my latest blog post, I wish you a beautiful late summer, maybe I will see you, out there in our beautiful country, for example for my talk about murmuration leadership – when cocreation gives us wings, facilitative leadership and how we are the culture 🙂
Click here to read my blogpost.
Murmuration leadership – when cocreation takes to the wing
Described in my book The Fruit Tree Strategy and in my new talk ‘Murmuration leadership – when cocreation takes to the wing’.
Here, I create a common research- and experience-based frame of reference and provide insights that employees and managers can use to create even greater well-being and job satisfaction – and pave the way for more self-organizing and self-managing organizations that move almost intuitively, like a single field and based on an underlying, conscious and common focus on remaining in human, meaningful resonance with the core task in a process that requires little thought, as it becomes second nature and we simply are, do and give what gives us wings.
Click here to read more about this talk.
Many warm greetings
Helen Eriksen
