#CopeWithCovid netinar orientation: Learn, innovate, lead and thrive in addressing the injustices of inequities

Blog series (08/04/2020). Updated regularly based on feedback and discussions with others. My open peer-reviewed, sense-making and iterative blogs are an open learning journal. This work-in-progress invites you on a journey to learn from the failures of Covid crisis to manage the mega-problems of 21st century.

Blog purpose and orientation: This series is not your typical 300-500 word blogs with an executive summary with clear, neat take-home messages. Allow time for deep self-reflective learning and slow thinking. Respond and write notes about any of the evocative questions in bold font below for group discussions. Just respond to those questions that you feel called to talk about. Consider sharing your notes as a blog and pose your own evocative questions. Bookmark this blog to come back to address other other questions later.

Read servant leadership development, covid revelations and network power first to understand the rationale for using netinars to develop dynamic agile learning skills. Sense-making netinars prepare and enable learners to understand the vulnerabilities, volatilities, uncertainties, complexities and ambiguities (V2UCA) of addressing mega-problems.

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Limitations of Webinars

Webinars are "sage-on-the-stage" passive learning experiences with talking head presentations with limited opportunities for questions and answers.

Netinars are designed to address the shortcomings of webinars. This blog prepares you to proactively participate in netinars: an experiential social network innovation to facilitate self-reflective, sense-making and high-order interactive learning designed to generate exponential impacts over time.

Experience netinars

Netinar is a new educational word for designing online small group "guide-on-the-side" interactive learning experiences that are structured to initiate dialogues, discourses, discussions and debates. They use a flipped classroom process where advanced preparation (reading an article, listening to a podcast, watching a video and/or journaling or doing a writing assignment) is required to facilitate small group online discussions (3-5 people).

Netinars use full engagement and interactive learning processes that do not permit multi-tasking, such as using smart phones or computers at the same time unrelated to the learning outcomes. This gives people the space and learning opportunities to create vivid and meaningful learning experiences.

Netinars require presence, self-awareness and mindfulness to facilitate slow thinking, deep self-reflection and sense-making. They are about networking together in order to engage with peers in deep self-reflective learning about oneself in relationship to others.

Netinars provide opportunities to cultivate virtues and practice the principles of positive psychology, such as gratitude, self-compassion and compassion. Facilitating the human interactions and connectivities in addressing V2UCA is critically important for collaborative learning on how to work synergistically together on generating exponential impacts.

After reading each blog, you can create your own sense-making journal notes by responding to the questions. Write responses to the questions that you feel called to speak out about.

• What do you react strongly for and against?
• What do your emotional reactions say about you, in relation to a particular trigger?

Self-reflection about a particular trigger gives more time to think more slowly about your emotional reactions. This gives you an opportunity to respond differently to that trigger. Furthermore, deep collaborative learning will enhance your experience of understanding your own mindset in relationship to others.

If you feel called upon to react and respond to any of the bolded questions, you can make some journal notes (critiques, reflections, opinions and questions about questions) to prepare yourself for a discussion with others. You may feel called on to look up old ideas, resources or references that you would like to discuss and share.

Click on the hyperlinks to incorporate new learning about key concepts into your sense-making journal for your learning journey. The questions may inspire to look up something new online. Do your own searches to seek different perspectives and find better resources to share. If so, come prepared to share what you have learned.

You can use notes in group discussions (in-person) or netinars (online interactive discussions). This collaborative learning process is essential for personal, professional and organizational leadership development. The servant leadership mega-challenge is about going upstream to concurrently address the ethical, political, policy, legal, economic, educational, social and criminal injustices and the inequities of healthy well-being.

In communion with others, you embark on a journey of engaging in iterative cycles of any combination of the following activities: reading, being, reflecting, discussing, becoming aware, unlearning, learning, unknowing, knowing, creating, innovating, doing, testing, evaluating and improving.

This integrated approach is the heart, mind, body and soul of purposeful, high-order experiential learning that facilitates sense-making, purpose and meaning. It is about facilitating the moral, virtuous, cognitive, emotional and physical development of healthy well-being for the greater good of all.

Most of the netinar time is spent in re-occurring small group sessions (10-30 minutes with 2-6 people) focusing on making sense of a particular issue, such as a specific question, dilemma, polarity, dilemma and any issue related to V2UCA. These small group discussions can use a wide variety of facilitation techniques.

At one extreme is the orderly allocated amount of time for each person to speak without interruptions with assigned time keepers and facilitators. At the other extreme is open discussion sessions without assigned time keepers and facilitators. There are pros and cons for different types of interactions. A purposeful combination of these options works best. Furthermore, online platforms give any group member options to comment on group dynamics or to express their opinions during and after the session.

The aim of netinars is to activate participation in ongoing learning networks, organizations and communities on issues that matter to our common humanity and gaia. These experiential growth and development approaches give us all hope, purpose and meaning in acting for the greater good of all in ways that cultivate and enhance our virtues.

Netinars use technology to create scalable learning journeys in communion with others, via break-out sessions on Zoom or break-out rooms or on Microsoft Teams, Run the World or Hopin. In effect, netinars are an inquiry-driven, truth-seeking pilgrimages that enable us to discover how to address complex problems together in open ways with transparent accountability. Most importantly, netinars generate the network power to scale up large-scale transformational change.

The purpose of the #CopeWithCovid netinar series is to foster innovative and divergent thinking and to share, brainstorm and discuss ideas about how you can innovate, lead and thrive in overcoming V2UCA.

This netinar series provides experiential opportunities to use self-reflective and collaborative learning processes. Learning from these experiences, we can develop the broad array of skills (described above) to adapt and respond more effectively to V2UCA and to improve our overall healthy well-being.

Navigate your learning journey

The blog series describes in more detail how we can take a holistic approach to addressing the interconnected web of complex problems in the 21st century. This blog series is designed to host netinars that will enable you to navigate your learning journey.

Servant leadership development programs address the challenges of intersectionality in creating an equitable and sustainable future for the greater good of all.

Session 1: Understand old problems anew (60- 90 minute session)

We need to see our old problems of isms anew in order to envision an inclusive, equitable and sustainable solutions.

a. Understand isms

b. Use the antidote to isms

c. Address the injustices of inequities

Session 2: Create an inclusive, equitable and sustainable future (60- 90 minute session)

An inclusive future calls for creating servant and distributed leadership development programs to address the injustices of isms and inequities. This goes goes beyond the either/or, "us versus them" polarization mindsets to both/and, "us and them" polarity management mindsets. This mindset shift sets the stage for envisioning an inclusive, equitable and sustainable future and the dawn of a new civilization about how we can learn, innovate, lead and thrive in addressing the mega-problems of the 21st century.

a. Envision an equitable dawn of a new civilization

b. Take global and and national perspectives together

c. Create servant leadership development programs

Session 3: Deconstruct structural and systemic isms (60- 90 minute session)

We need to de-construct the structural and systemic isms that create the cultural deterrents to making transformational change. This calls for designing scalable learning platforms to accelerate our innovative capabilities and capacities to address the mega-problems of the 21st century.

a. Redress wealth inequalities

b. Address gender inequities

c. Overcome structural racism and systemic discrimination

Session 4: Covid revelations blog addresses how the Covid crisis challenged the fragilities of our political, economic and healthcare systems. One way or another, this crisis has revealed, triggered and exacerbated political, racial, social, gender, economic, environmental and legal injustices on a grand and global scale.

Netinar blog as described above.

Session 5: Network power blog addresses for a mass movement to create a new dawn of civilization and build a sustainable and equitable future for the greater good of all.

Session 6: Leadership failures blog explores leadership and cultural challenges of developing dynamic agile learning systems, networks, organizations and communities needed to address V2UCA and create a sustainable future. This blog sets up these topics and pose questions in following domains.

• Identify leadership failures
• Understand the nature of cultural entanglements
• Ask and answer evocative questions to develop anti-fragility
• Design a sustainable future for the post-growth era
• Use scalable blended learning innovations
• Build a story movement about sustainable development
• Make sense of, and share our individual stories

Session 7: Learning journey blog illustrates the relevance of macro-level issues to your learning journey of innovation and your pilgrimage of collaborative sense-making. You are invited to reflect about questions to address these topics.

• Frame transformational leadership questions
• Begin with the meta-view
• Ask evocative questions about shaping the future
• Chart your innovation journey
• Create learning networks to build a sense-making movement

Session 8: Macro-level perspective blog on-boards you to address the V2UCA of transformational change. You can explore themes both from high-level and in-depth perspectives depending on time allocations.

• Explore the political challenge of creating a sustainable future
• Imagine a sustainable future in the post-growth world
• Understand the original sin of reductionism
• Ask holistic questions
• Thrive with complexity thinking, human-centered design and anti-fragility skills

Session 9: Blog 1 explores the challenges needed to create more effective synergies between personal and systemic transformations in order to address the injustices of inequities revealed by Covid more effectively over time.

Personal transformation challenges

• Adopt the beginner's mind of curiosity, inquiry and discovery
• Take the meta-position
• Do slow reading for slow thinking and deep self-reflection reflections
• Transition from short-termism to long-termism

Systemic transformation challenges

• Use polarity questions to understand complexity
• Explore how cultural entanglements constrain healthcare
• Understand the biases against equality and equity
• Anticipate the worst case scenario and prepare for the best scenario
• Scale up leadership skill, capabilities and capacities

Session 10: Blog 2 explores how education has failed us in addressing V2UCA.

• Identify what is most deficient in education
• Counteract Covid misinformation and disinformation
• Understand the limitations of leadership models and brands
• Understand the limitations of sages-on-the-stage
• Mobilize guide-on-the-side learning methods
• Embark on a journey of creating your own learning outcomes

Session 11: Blog 3 describes strategies to learn, innovate, lead and thrive with V2UCA.

• Cultivate cultural entanglements to thrive
• Prepare for the long game of the psychosocial pandemic
• Generate heroic 7.0 network power
• Create a new vision and purpose for servant leadership
• Use metaphorical thinking to expand leadership mindsets
• Foster mindfulness, equanimity and polarity management
• Learn from past mistakes
• Understand the limitations of scientific predictive modeling
• Use simple rules to manage complexity
• Adopt the worldview of long-termism
• Enhance organizational agility, creativity and innovation
• Adopt sustainable meta-strategies to thrive
• Develop high-functioning dynamic agile learning platforms

Session 12: Blog 4 addresses how to intervene at micro, meso and macro levels.

• Expand beyond individualistic and self-sufficient ways of coping
• Scale up dynamic agile learning networks
• Set up peer support, coaching and learning platforms
• Implement micro, meso and macro-level interventions

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The next blog will address leadership failures as described above.

Read blog series: servant leadership development, covid relevation, netinar, leadership failures, journey journal, macro-perspective blogs 1, 2, 3 and 4.

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Candor and feedback appreciated about #CopewithCovid netinars. Any ideas about leads, connections or organizations to host netinars appreciated. Happy to chat too with kindred spirits. Contact via Linked-in. Pro-bono exchange offer.

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Big ask: I am now looking for social entrepreneurs, collaborators, funders and organizations to launch this sense-making netinar series. Ideas and connections for testing this prototype appreciated.

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