BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 80
Intervention and Leadership
each other, to engage in a longer term process of reflection and learning
together and their capacity to consider, even for a moment, that some of their
own ways of thinking and working were contributing to the their inability to
“solve” the presenting problem. Some of the early interventions including
gathering individual opinions or the team and presenting them as some “data”
to consider; asking one early provocative questions and regularly returning to
it so the team “got used to” considering it and getting the individual team
members permission to comment on their individual behaviour in joint
sessions so as to be able to redirect and coach them in order to identify default
behaviours that might hinder progress.
While observation, interpretations and questions are forms of intervention; they
are all used as a means to assist groups see themselves differently in order to
develop plans of action. The final forms of intervention, action, relate to efforts
to shape and structure the form of action groups take on behalf of their mission.
They may take place now, soon or later; may require analysis, research,
consultation and careful testing, or may utilise known tools, techniques,
analytical models and meeting protocols; and they may be described as a
strategy, step, an experiment or plan.
For managers who are participants in leadership development activity using
these more structured forms of intervention is paradoxically simple while also
difficult.
Simple because most managers are used to finding solutions to
problems and developing strategies and action plans. Difficult because rushing
to action is often a sign that adaptive issues are not being addressed and, in that
context of learning and development activities, attempting to implement an
Copyright Vantage Point Consulting Pty Ltd 2010
Not to be reproduced without the author’s permission
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