During times of change and business disruption, our leadership behaviors come under stress and the organizational dynamics they create cause disengagement, conflict, loss of focus, drifting corporate culture, and poor performance.
The best performing organizations avoid this by actively exploring alternatives, inviting challenge, and collaborating to adjust and build resilience.
But engaging in these critical conversations is difficult. It requires an open mindset, high self-awareness, active listening and collaboration. These behaviours are often in short supply under stress and uncertainty but can be encouraged with framing around a clear question that provokes a range of ideas and interpretations. Shared views can then be considered, debated and resolved to form common understanding, expand thinking into new territory, and build collaboration for action.
Using images to explore framing questions is a quick and effective way to do this. Pictures trigger our creative, intuitive and “thinking fast” right brain in a non-threatening way that generates fresh ideas, offers new perspectives, and gives new meaning to old problems. They can be used to explore any question around leadership, change, innovation or performance. Images can also support individual coaching and mentoring, or broader training and education in organizations.
Aperture Leadership offers a fast, energising and creative way to tackle leadership challenges and draws from research in Behavioral Economics, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, and Appreciative Inquiry.
The act of identifying a frame for inquiry, provoking debate, enables groups to find common ground that increases engagement and commitment to any shared outcomes.
Images do this in an intuitive, universal way that helps groups focus on the issue and the ideas rather than judging the person, engaging in politics, or reverting to “not invented here” resistance.
These creative exercises literally “open the aperture” on key strategic and existential questions facing leaders in any organizational context.
Groups work using card decks or virtual images and a Facilitator. A typical session will last between 1-3 hours depending on group size and the number or questions explored. Group size can be 1:1 in the case of Executive Coaching or Mentoring, 5-10 for small intact teams, 30-50 for cross functional groups, and larger groups for online workshops.
Once the challenge or framing question is identified, participants choose images from the portfolio that, for them, responds to the question or theme in some way.
Small groups (typically 3’s or 5’s) share their image choices and their interpretation against the framing question. Each image will provoke dialogue and inquiry across the group, which is then rolled up into a plenary thematic discussion. A Facilitator can add relevant observations and further frameworks to reveal the group’s social dynamic, strategic choices, future direction, innovation potential, and so on.
The process is repeated for subsequent framing questions, which typically build on each other, allowing groups to debate and assess alternatives for change. Often a visual summary will capture the conclusion of the session, and the Facilitator or leader can document outcomes.
Images can be used to explore any personal question or issue that requires understanding a problem, looking at options, or finding new approaches to a situation. For coaching, mentoring or as a tool for personal reflection try these framing questions:
1. What problem, opportunity or issue do I need to explore right now? Find a picture or pictures that “look like” it
2. How do I feel about this situation at the moment? Find 1-2 images that represent positive feelings and 1-2 that represent negative associations
3. What would a positive change look like around this issue? Find images that represent something positive now, in 1 month, or in 1 year
4. What options or resources do I have today that could help? Find a few images that represent this
5. What actions or steps can I take right away to improve things? Find another image for this if it helps
6. Lay out the images in a sequence of “current reality”, “future actions” and “success/outcomes”
7. Write down your conclusions and what you need to get started. This can include getting more information, sharing an idea, or just moving to action. Share your story with a friend, mentor or manager to create momentum
Maintaining effective social dynamics is key to high performing teams. The “How” (the ways we interact, what we say, the quality of our relationships, our reciprocal expectations) is as important - and sometimes more important - than the “What” (the actions we take, the decisions we make, the plans we execute).
We also know from Behavioral Science what attributes lead to collective success in high performing teams. Key ones include a clear purpose, shared context, well defined goals, freedom to act, psychological safety, and permission to fail. If you need to grow, raise performance, or align your team, use these framing questions as you work with the image library:
1. What are the biggest opportunities for us in the next 1-3 year (or relevant timeframe)? Choose up to 3 images and share
2. What is our potential to achieve these based on our current ways of working? Choose 1 image and share
3. How would you describe the identity and values of this group today (are we open, curious, defensive, ambitious)? Choose up to 3 images and share
4. What attributes would increase our effectiveness and our ability to deliver opportunities? Choose up to 3 images and share
5. What will get in the way of our shared success? Choose 1 image and share
6. If we manage to navigate these challenges, what will success look like? Choose 1 image and share
7. How can I personally contribute to this vision to make it a reality? Choose 1 image and share. Then document agreements and actions.
Identity and purpose at the organizational level are as important to drive action and results as our personal ambitions and sense of Self are to drive our own goals. To be fully engaged with any organization, people need to feel emotionally connected and personally invested in a wider “story”. Often, organizations fail to fully engage their people and access much needed discretionary effort because these important questions of values, purpose, or strategy are not shared or understood. To explore how you can get people fully onboard with your strategy, or to co-create a more powerful future together if the strategy is in doubt, try these framing questions:
1. What picture describes our organizational identity today (how are we seen externally)? Choose 1 image and share
2. How would you describe our organizational culture today (how it feels internally)? Choose up to 3 images and share while discussing the question “Do our external identity and internal cultures match? If there are there gaps what are they and how is this affecting performance?”
3. What strategic challenges / opportunities we are facing today? Choose up to 3 images, share and choose one challenge / opportunity to explore further
4. What would success look like if we manage this challenge / opportunity well? Choose 1 image and share
5. What needs to change for this to happen culturally (internal) and in term of identity (external)? Choose up to 3 images and share
6. What can we do as a group today to start creating this imagined future? Choose 1 image and share
7. What will you do personally as a leader to support this change? Choose 1 image and share, then document agreements and actions