How Co-Creative Leaders Create Change (Part 1)

Welcome to the latest edition of the “How to be a Co-Creative Leader” newsletter!

We covered a lot of ground on different topics in this newsletter. I am really enjoying writing this fresh content for you all. Fun fact, since our last edition, we’ve passed the 600 subscriber mark! I’m glad to see the content slowly catching on.

For this edition of the newsletter, I wanted to paint a high-level picture of how Co-Creative Leaders can drive change in their organizations. My intention is to go through each of five key skills and share with you how they apply in the context of organizational change.

You will not get as deep a dive as by reading my book “The Way of the Co-Creative Leader ” but I want to show you how everything ties together.?

Enough preliminary chat… Let’s get started!

What is Co-Creative Leadership?

Many leaders struggle to fully engage and involve their teams. More and more in the workplace, they face situations where they feel off balance and no longer know what to do. Should they let their team self-organize or should they step in and provide guidance and leadership?

Other leaders struggle because of their leadership style . They feel that what got them in their current role is no longer enough in the current business world. The clash of generations, the needs of the younger generation demand a new form of leadership that increases the engagement of all employees.

To me, Co-Creative Leadership is a mindset to adopt. It is about harnessing the brainpower and knowledge of the people around you in order to create highly motivated and engaged teams.?

I came up with the idea of Co-Creative Leadership over the course of 4 years of coaching senior leaders in organizations. I could see patterns of behaviors that would come back over and over again. I could also see that the solutions we were coming up with revolved around five key skills that I would help these leaders develop.

I like to say that Co-Creative Leadership is not based around things you need to do. It’s not a one-size fits all formula to apply everywhere. It is a way of leading where you may need to change your beliefs and your entire way of being. The focus is on how you need to develop yourself as a leader to create more engagement around you.

Applying Co-Creative Leadership in an Organizational Transformation?

Now that I gave you some context, let’s apply the five key skills of a Co-Creative Leader to the context of an organizational transformation. For the sake of this example, let’s assume that you are looking at making a big change in your organization next year.

We’re in August so you have time to warm people up to the idea and get things rolling. If I were doing this in real-life with clients, I would suggest they start taking action in October to be ready for January.

Applying Skill #1 - Being a voice among many in the conversation

Co-Creative Leaders help their teams focus on the problem and can be an active participant in building the solution with them. When they speak, the people around them feel free to challenge or reject their ideas. Co-Creative Leaders also listen and recognize good ideas from others.

In the early stages of your transformation, what you want to do is engage your change leaders . In a series of meetings, you want to talk together and get clarity around what the goal is for the next year. You will also want to talk about how this change will look when you are done. Together, you want to build a vivid picture that all of you will be able to communicate to others in the business.

In these meetings, as a leader, you need to find the balance between sharing your basic vision for the change while allowing others to build on top of it. You want to do this by not talking all the time but also listening to others talk and help pull out the best ideas.

As you move along in your transformation, you will find many other opportunities to be a voice among many in the conversation. For example, you may want to break the transformation down in three month increments. By doing this, you will need regular meetings where you initially build the short-term plan. Eventually, these same meetings could be there to discuss the short term plan and current progress of the team towards meeting them.

Applying Skill #2 - Unleashing the leaders around you

Co-Creative Leaders know when to lead and when to follow others. They have the ability to recognize disengaged people with untapped leadership potential and find ways to put them in situations that help them grow into the leaders they can be.

To apply this skill, let’s come back to those meetings where you are defining the transformation that you are looking to create in the year. Who should you invite to this meeting? You can definitely start by all your formal leaders. What about those informal leaders though? By adding them to these sessions, you will allow them a chance to contribute and also be leaders in this change.

The trick to successfully applying this skill is to leverage what I call the dormant leaders in your organization. These are the people with great leadership potential but that are holding back their leadership because they do not feel legitimate doing so or they do not have the right title in the culture of your company. You can find these dormant leaders in any of the teams in your organization. You probably already know who they are.

In the context of an organizational transformation, you may also find opportunities for further growth among your current group of leaders. Who would enjoy this opportunity to step in and lead the overall change? It does not need to be one person, it can be a small group that push and drive each other.

Unleashing leaders is about creating opportunities for them but also supporting them and making sure they are not left to their own devices. You want to develop their capacity not throw them off the deep end.

Applying Skill #3 - Building the capacity of your team

Co-Creative Leaders understand that they need to help team members build new skills in order to build a high-performing team or organization. They develop their people and create sustainable change in their organizations.

This is one of the skills that you will apply throughout your transformation journey. For example, the first time your team works together in the vision sessions, you will want to put in place some basic behavioral ground rules.?

This could be a list of things such as:

• Raise your hand and wait before speaking
• Be respectful of others, no judgment
• Be constructive in what you say
• etc.

Each of these is an opportunity to develop capacity . How do we practice doing this? How do we call each other out when it’s not happening? How does the person accept and recover from the call out?

The idea is to consciously practice things as a team. Another example would be the meeting I discussed earlier for a three-month planning and follow-up/tracking. These meetings will not be super efficient the first time around. You will need to still have them and over time, things will get smoother.

In the context of a transformation, you will also want to build the capacity of your leadership team to talk about the real issues together in a constructive and productive manner.

You will want to develop the capacity of individuals but also of teams, whether it be your leadership team or a team on the ground.?

Finally, please note, it may seem like this will take a lot of extra time but in reality it won’t. The trick is in being consistent in the things you do so that the consistency can form new habits for people. First thing you will realize in a few months is that you are doing lot more than you used to do in less time.

Conclusion

In this edition of the newsletter, we explored how Co-Creative Leaders can drive change in their organizations by applying three of the five key skills of Co-Creative Leadership to the context of launching and running an organizational transformation.

We started by defining Co-Creative Leadership as a mindset that harnesses the brainpower and knowledge of the people around you to create highly motivated and engaged teams. This approach is particularly valuable in today's rapidly changing business environment, where traditional leadership styles are no longer enough.

We then launched our exploration of the first three key skills of a Co-Creative Leader:

1. Being a voice among many in the conversation.
2. Unleashing the leaders around you.
3. Building the capacity of your team.

Remember, implementing these skills may seem time-consuming at first, but consistency is key. Over time, you'll find that you and your team are accomplishing more in less time as these new practices become habits.

By applying these Co-Creative Leadership skills effectively, you will create a more engaged, empowered, and effective organization that is better equipped to navigate change. You can start seeing now how these skills work together to create a collaborative environment where transformation can thrive.

In our next edition, we'll explore the final two skills of Co-Creative Leadership and how they further contribute to successful organizational change.

Thank you for engaging with this newsletter. I look forward to hearing about how you apply these skills in your own transformation efforts. If you have any experiences or insights you'd like to share, please don't hesitate to reach out!

Call to Action

Are you ready to dive deeper into mastering Co-Creative Leadership? If today’s insights sparked your curiosity and you are ready to explore further, I’m here to guide you. Click here to schedule a discovery call with me. Together, we can tailor a development plan that aligns with your unique leadership style and goals.

Thank you for taking the time to engage with this newsletter, and I look forward to supporting you in your journey to becoming a Co-Creative Leader.

About Steffan Surdek

?? Are you ready to elevate your leadership to the next level?

With over a decade of experience in leadership coaching, I've dedicated my career to helping executives and management teams unlock their full potential. My approach is centered around the concept of Co-Creative Leadership, focusing on fostering a culture of collaboration and action-oriented learning.

If you're looking to transform your team's dynamics, enhance collaboration, or reduce conversational debt, I'm here to guide you. Feel free to schedule a discovery call with me by clicking here .

For more information:

Visit our website: https://www.surdek.com

Visit our blog: https://www.surdek.com/blog

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