Questions for reflection

What cracks do you recognise in your own organisation? Which of the problems described, both external and internal, feel familiar to you?

Where do you feel the tension between the two paradigms? Have you experienced moments in your work where the current system clashes with what you know would need to be done differently?

How is leadership practised and understood in your organisation? Does it rely heavily on a few people in power or is it more distributed?

What words do you use in your organisation to talk about leadership, purpose, culture and organisation? Is there a shared language for these things, and does it represent the language you think is needed?

What generates the most resistance in you from what you have read in this chapter? Resistance often points to something important. Where does it come from? What would you be willing to let go of in order to move forward?

Looking at the I, WE and IT model. In which of the three dimensions do you think your organisation needs to invest most in? Why? How do you view the relationships between the changes needed in the three dimensions?

What are your core values and purpose at work?

What kind of impact would you like to achieve through your work?

What do you feel are your core qualities and challenges at work?

How do your own behaviour patterns affect the dynamic of your team?

In what ways do you feel your personal core qualities and challenges contribute or hinder you from practising shared leadership in your team?

What aspects of yourself would you like to develop in your work?

To what extent do you feel your work today supports your values, purpose and desired impact?

What can you change in your work to make it align more closely with your values, purpose and desired impact?

What can you change in your ways of working to experience desired balance and well-being at work?

How can you contribute to shared rituals for balance and well-being in your team?

What practices do you have or would like to develop to support yourself in practising reflection and learning at work?

How can you contribute to shared learning and development in your team?

What can you change in your ways of working to better support your colleagues when they need help?

How can you explore using different spaces at work to best support the different types of work tasks you do?

How can you plan your time differently to prioritise what matters most in your work?

What are your team’s shared core values and purpose?

How are they connected to the overall values and purpose of your organisation?

What kinds of behaviours are crucial for enacting your team’s shared values and purpose in your daily work?

How do you experience psychological safety in your team?

What small, concrete actions can your team take to strengthen psychological safety?

What is the most common way of listening in your team (downloading, factual, empathic, or generative)?

How can you integrate intentional practice of more empathic and generative listening and dialogue into your daily work and into your team rituals?

How is coaching and the giving and receiving of feedback practised in your team/organisation today?

Does responsibility lie with the manager(s) or is it shared among team colleagues?

How can you develop and integrate peer-to-peer feedback and coaching practices into your team/organisational culture?

How do you deal with conflicts in your team/organisation?

What would it take to build a culture in which you can openly talk about conflict together?

How is power exercised in your team/organisation (formally and informally)?

Can you talk openly about power in your team/organisation? If not, what would need to change to make that possible?

Which forms of power (power-over, power-under, power-within and power-with) would you say are most often exercised in your team/ organisation? In what situations?

How can you strengthen your team/organisation to practise more power-within and power-with?

How would you describe your current role? What parts of the job give you joy and energy and what parts of it drain you?

What responsibilities do you hold that you think someone else on your team might be better placed to take on, or more motivated by?

What tasks would you like to do but you haven’t tried because they fall outside your job description?

What assumptions do you carry about what a “good manager” or “good employee” looks like? Where do those assumptions come from?

If you are a manager, in what moments do you find it hardest to let go of control? And if you are a team member, in what moments do you find it hardest to step up and take initiative?

How do you respond when a colleague makes a mistake or tries something that doesn’t work?

To what extent do you feel you know your colleagues’ strengths, interests and life circumstances? What can you do to get to know them better?

When something isn’t working in your team... What is your first instinct? Is it to report it, fix it yourself, stay quiet, or bring it to the group? What does that instinct tell you?

How do you support the leadership in your team beyond your formal role? What else do you think is possible?

What would it mean for you personally if your team led itself more collectively? What do you feel would be the benefits for you, and how would you perceive it as a loss?

What is one leadership responsibility that you could imagine taking on? What would you need to feel ready?

How comfortable are you with saying “I don’t know” or “I need help” in your team? What shapes that comfort or discomfort?

What would change in your team if roles were more fluid and distributed based on interest and capacity rather than fixed titles?

In what ways could you better support a colleague who is going through a difficult period? And how would you ask for such support in case you needed it?

What is one small step you could take today to contribute differently to how your team leads together?

What processes do you already have in place in your team/ organisation that invite participation, co-creation and shared leadership?

What processes in your team/organisation do you feel are more top-down or within the domain of formal managers?

What enables versus hinders participation and shared leadership in your team/organisation today?

Which of the processes that formal managers are responsible for today would be most meaningful to democratise?

Which work tasks or teams in your organisation could be the best place to start for testing participatory structures?

Where can you find pockets of possibilities in your own team’s work processes where it might be easy to start testing more participation and collective leadership?

How could you test more participatory meeting formats?

Which type of meeting could you most easily start prototyping with and how could such a meeting be redesigned to invite more participation and shared leadership?

How can you create possibilities for training and skills development in areas like facilitation that are at the core of practicing participatory structures?

Who might be the first ambassadors/people in your team/ who would be interested in participating in such training? How could you engage them?

What are the different types of decisions being made in your team and how do you typically make these decisions today?

If you could introduce more participative decision-making processes, which decisions would you make through mandate, advice process, consent and consensus?

In which areas would it be important to increase the mandate for individuals to make decisions within their own areas of responsibility and expertise without involving managers?

How could you try sharing responsibility for the processes that traditionally fall within the domain of formal managers and support functions (like HR)? For example, recruitment and onboarding of new team members, development and feedback talks, holding meetings, planning vacations, and creating a thriving work environment.

How is the budget planned and decided upon today in your team/ organisation?

What are some first steps you could take to introduce more participation in budget planning and budget management within your team/organisation?

How transparent is information sharing in your team/organisation?

Which types of information should be made accessible to more people in your team/organisation to enable greater participation in decision-making and the practice of shared leadership?

In what forms should this information be made available to make it accessible and easily understandable?

What is your personal motivation for working with transformation towards greater participation and more collective forms of leadership in your team, organisation, or in the wider ecosystem?

Why does your team, organisation, or the wider ecosystem need this transformation?

What could the benefits of this transformation be for your team, organisation and/or the wider ecosystem, including end users?

Where and how could you and your colleagues initiate this transformation journey?

Which teams or parts of the organisation would be interested and benefit most from stronger collaboration and collective forms of leadership? Where could significant results be produced in a rather short time?

Is there a complex challenge your organisation is facing that would benefit from stronger participation, collaboration and shared leadership? What is it?

Who from top management could support the transformation and help you anchor it within top management (and with politicians if needed)?

How could strengthened participation, collaboration and distributed leadership support the organisation’s overall strategy and goals, or help solve challenges your organisation is facing today?

In what ways could it be possible to create interest and raise general awareness and knowledge about systemic transformation towards more participation, collaboration and distributed leadership in your organisation?

Who could be your allies in helping you raise general awareness and knowledge?

What are your key strengths and challenges as a transformation agent? How can you use your strengths, and who could you engage to help you navigate your weaknesses or challenges in this journey?

How does your current office space support and/or hinder collaboration, co-creation and shared leadership?

If your workplace lacks spaces for co-creation, are there minor interventions you could implement in the office, or other pockets of possibilities you can identify, to create enabling spaces for co-creation?

What might the key obstacles in your transformation journey be, and how could you work around them?

Which other organisation(s) or communities could you learn more from about systemic transformation towards participation, co-creation and collective forms of leadership?