Host author Mark McKergow is writing a piece on Substack every week at the moment. Last week’s has caused some excitement – it’s about a new way of using Host Leadership ideas! Alyson McGregor and her colleagues at Altogether Better, a UK Nartional Health Service network, are exploring how to work in the ‘liminal space’ between the ‘professional’ world of the doctors practice and the ‘life’ world of patients – and Host Leadership is part of it. Read it now (and it’s free to subscribe for new ideas every week).
There has been a lot in the British news recently about Nadim Zahawi, a cabinet minister who was sacked by prime minister Rishi Sunak at the weekend. Zahawi had been penalised by the UK tax authorities for errors which he had not revealed when asked at various stages. The final straw came when Sir Laurie Magnus, recently appointed ethics advisor to the prime minister, found that Sunak had clearly breached the ministerial code (a code of conduct which ministers are supposed to follow) no less than seven times.
From the perspective of a host leader, this issue is wound
up in the Gatekeeper role and the negotiation of boundaries. In the Host book
we talk about the negotiation and observance of boundaries as a key part of
leading as a host. Host leaders are clear about where boundaries are, and what
happens when people cross them.
One kind of boundary is around a space or container where
things happen. ‘In this team/project/community we work like this and not like
that’. When people join the team or step into the space, it’s the role of the
host leader to introduce these boundaries and help folk get accustomed to them.
This kind of ‘enforcement’ is more like a routine than a rule; something to be
learned and habitually used than enforced with punishments. (Remember, host
leaders prefer to work with the soft power of invitation than the hard power of
coercion.)
Another related kind of boundary is choosing what is
acceptable and encouraged within the space, and what is not. The ministerial
code is just such one of these, and is quite clearly written. What’s the problem
then? One problem is that in recent times, prime ministers have chosen to
ignore it. When
home secretary Priti Patel was found to have breached the code by bullying her
staff, then-prime minster Boris Johnson announced that he had full
confidence in her (prompting the understandable resignation of his
ethics advisor Sir Alex Allan). (Some
pedants will point out that as the code is the pm’s to write and enforce, they
can’t break it – as if such a flexible interpretation would build confidence
rather than point out the essentially feudal authority of a British prime
minister!)
However, there is another more subtle difficulty here. In
all these cases the prime minister has relied on their ethics advisor to make
inquiries and deliver a verdict. It seems to me that this means that the prime
minister washes their own hands of making what might be a politically difficult
decision by passing it on. And I am not alone;
constitutional law commentator David Allen Green writes in his excellent Law
And Lore blog that:
…it really should not be the job of an adviser, however
independent or distinguished, to work out whether a Prime Minister should sack
a minister.
A good host leader would surely take their own code and
boundaries more seriously? Outsourcing such decisions is a sign that the code
is not something that the leader takes seriously but rather will overlook until
the evidence is damning from all sources. Rishi Sunak would be a lot stronger
by taking his own boundaries seriously and using them decisively. Unless the
Conservative government is a party of rogues who are all routinely stepping
over the line… perish the thought.
One great example of a boundary making hard decisions easier
(and one which is not in the Host book) is from mineral water company Perrier. In
1990 some bottles of the water were found to contain benzene, a toxic chemical.
Although the contaminated bottles were found in Denmark and the Netherlands,
Perrier withdrew every single bottle on sale everywhere in the world. Perrier’s
chairman Gustave Leven said:
”I have built up this company over the past 40 years
around an image of perfection, I don’t want the least doubt, however small, to
tarnish our product’s image of quality and purity.”
Perrier took a huge financial hit and the damage to their reputation was serious. But the decision to withdraw all the stock from sale was easy.
Dates and mates
Join me at the Host Leadership Gathering 2023 in Vienna, Austria on 12-13 June 2023. We’re looking for interesting participants and (even better) people who’d like to bring along a workshop, a topic for conversation or some thoughts about leading as a host. Full details at https://sinnvoll-fuehren.com/hostleadershipgathering2023/.
There is a rare opportunity coming up to work with Host author Mark McKergow in his online four-part workshop Hosting Generative Change. The material is built on Mark’s 2020 book of the same name, published by the Bushe Marshak Institute.
The course follows the idea of supporting generative dialogues and conversations – new perspectives, new ideas, with as much listening as talking. The way into these dialogues is hosting: the way we bring people together has a huge impact on what happens. In this course Host author Dr Mark McKergow will work with you to help you host dialogues, people and organisations in ways which underpin, not overshadow, this fascinating, delicate, and essentially human practice.
The programme is based around learning and applying some key frameworks to a real-life organisational development challenge or project. The modules will be varied, each one featuring input, discussion, application and reflection. The group will form a learning community with everyone both learning and contributing. Dr. Mark McKergow has been leading online courses for over a decade and is looking forward to working with you.
Online on four Tuesdays: March 21 and 28, April 4 and 11 2023. Sessions will run from 1pm-5pm UK time (14h-18h CET, also good for Asia and USA). Registration is €490 for the whole course (+ VAT if applicable).
Mark McKergow has started a new writing project on Substack. He’s building on his work in Host Leadership, Solutions Focus and Village In The City to explore how we might organise both humanely AND effectively.
It’s easy to see how to be humane and ineffective. It’s even easier to see how to be effective and inhumane. But how to combine both?
Mark’s career has been exploring this question from various angles in learning, coaching, organisational change and community development. Now he’s building on his 30 years of experience to put this work together in new ways, explore the gaps, look at unanswered questions and try to be as clear as possible.
NEWS: I’m very excited that the 2023 Host Leadership Gathering is going ahead face-to-face in Vienna, Austria on 12-13 June. We’d love to see you, get your proposals for a workshop/topic and have you join us there. Two days full of inspiration .
By the way… the excellent SOLWorld international conference is happening in the same venue just before our gathering, on 8-10 June 2023. You may well be interested to join both events – many people are! More information on SOLWorld 2023 at https://www.solworld2023.at/.
In this accessible and engaging video-based course, Host co-author Dr Mark McKergow takes us through the background to the metaphor and model of Host Leadership, and a deeper dive into the useful and innovative Six Roles and Four Positions of a host leader.
There are eight modules, each consisting of three 5-7 minute video sections. The videos contain specially created animations and graphics to help you learn, remember and apply the ideas of Host Leadership. Mark also presents some short activities for you to do to relate the ideas to your own situation. There are also further reading suggestions, links and ways to continue your development after the course.
Use code HL-LAUNCHMONTH20 to get 20% off the course until the end of November 2022.
See more information, watch Mark talk about the course, see an excerpt from one of the modules and register at:
“In Mark’s new course, he becomes the guide by your side while you’re exploring Host Leadership. I thoroughly enjoyed how he combined a sociable, motivating tone with precise wording, and luckily, his reflective questions exercises about my own practice stopped any possibility of thinking ‘I’ve-already-been-there-done-that’ dead in its tracks.”
Rolf F Katzenberger, facilitator and team coach, Pragmatic Teams
“Mark McKergow pioneered the concept of “Host Leadership”. This course is a welcome and needed enhancement to the subject.Whether you have read his book and want to embed the ideas in yourself and your organisation, or you want to dive straight into this intuitive yet (for some) elusive concept, this course is an excellent option to choose. Not only does Mark bring expertise in the subject area, he is also a skilled, good humoured and experienced communicator and trainer.I strongly recommend the course – understanding how to be a host leader will give you added impact in both personal and professional settings.”
Dialogic OD is about creating generative dialogue and conversation – new perspectives, new ideas, with as much listening as talking. The way into these dialogues is hosting: the way we bring people together has a huge impact on what happens. In this course Host author Dr Mark McKergow will work with you to help you host dialogues, people and organisations in ways which underpin, not overshadow, this fascinating, delicate, and essentially human practice.
Four online sessions on 1, 3, 8 and 15 November at 4pm UK time ( 17h CET, 11am EST, 8am Pacific)
Chris Corrigan, one of my long-time friends and inspirations, has just started blogging again. This is good news – his ideas and views from the western shores of Canada about hosting, facilitating, conversing and including are always worth catching.
Today’s blog is a list of 10 interesting things from his ‘parking lot’ – the place where he stores ideas and material pending making use of it. My eye was caught by a short video of Patricia Shaw on the characteristics of a good leader from a dialogic perspective. It’s only six minutes long and well worth a watch.
Patricia Shaw
I have summarised her characteristics, which are well-observed and very concisely delivered. She says leaders could do more of these:
Think about convening conversations that might not happen otherwise. Opening spaces for reflective inquiry.
Taking action visibly. Taking up a voice, speaking out, creating ripples where you don’t quite know the consequences.
Leaders shift the conversational life of the organisation. Having the courage and skill to invite and sustain free-flowing conversation which is not simply following a highly structured agenda.
Invent and improvise shifts in the configuration of speaking with each other – all together, in small groups, listening carefully. Work with conversation as an art.
Encourage talk linking large-scale abstract concepts to the small-scale realities of everyday life. Many leaders are excellent at giving accounts of the former and are unable to translate these to the latter.
Know how to balance and move between written documentation with oral communication. The former leads to a narrowing and reduction of the richness of the latter.
Leaders can be very good at explanation and yet very poor at description. They are too eager to move towards simple cause-and-effect linkages, where a descriptive-reflective capacity to inquire into the way circumstances happen and change.
Being able to evoke and notice ‘vivid moments of experience’, moments of common reference which have meaning for people in their everyday activity.
Pay less attention to generating yet another action plan and more attention on what is opening up in front of us in terms of small steps.
Each of these nine micro-practices can be seen to be part of a host leadership stance, particularly when combined with the detail and descriptive work of Solutions Focus. My eye was particularly drawn to:
Work in different ways with language and conversation – all together, in small groups, individually and so on, using the Four Positions of a host leader.
Bringing people together to join forces to exchange, converse and emerge new ideas (rather than have a constraining agenda), in the same way that a good party is not scripted but flows this way and that.
Taking small steps (as in the User’s Guide To The Future framework) as a way of positively exploring and learning, rather than as part of a huge action plan.
The full programme for the Host Leadership Gathering 2022 is now online. It looks great – there are 12 excellent workshops from around the world including presenters from education (in Australia) and healthcare (in the British NHS) and multinational FMCG (“the beer that reaches the parts others can’t”) contexts. There are also top leadership development, coaching and agile professionals sharing their experience.
Host author Dr Mark McKergow will start the event with a keynote exploring ‘Host Leadership in the age of the strongman’. There will also be an Open Space session for you to bring along your ideas, challenges and questions. If you are keen to learn more and use Host Leadership in your work, this is the place to be,
We had hoped to offer an in-person option but that is not possible. So, the event is online only. You can participate from the comfort of your own place anywhere in the world. And you will have exclusive access to recordings of all the sessions!
We are very excited to announce that there will be a Host Leadership Gathering in 2022! We are hoping to gather in Milan, Italy on 26-27 May 2022 – and there will also definitely be an option to join online.
The theme of the event is ‘Building A Host Leadership Practitioner Circle’. Some of our longest-standing practitioners will be there to share their work. If you would like to make Host Leadership a key part of your own practice – as a leader, as a consultant or as a coach – then this is the moment to step forward and come to join in.
There is already a strong list of workshops on the menu, and we are seeking your proposals for sessions too (by Friday 18 February please). Presenters include Mark McKergow (UK), Veronika Jungwirth and Dr Ralph Miarka (Austria), Rolf Katzenberger (Germany), Dr Leah Davcheva (Bulgaria), Mike Brent (UK/France), Jason Pascoe (Australia) and Pierluigi Pugliese (Italy/Germany). You can see the current menu at https://connexxo.com/events/host-leadership-gathering-2022/.
The event is being hosted by our friends Pierluigi Pugliese and Katrin Seger of Connexxo. Registration is just €99 which guarantees online participation. As the travel situation comes clear, there will be an option to join in person if you can.
Come and join us – expand your practice, join our practitioner circle as it forms, and meet some great people!
