Creative Leadership Learning Sets

It was 1997.  I had heard of the concept of a Learning Set. It was something that appealed on a number of levels. For example, the idea of a community in action is one where it is possible to build links, to establish a ‘fraternity’ which can provide mutual support to managers who can often feel terribly isolated. But I was convinced that ‘building community’ would not be a sufficiently credible reason for forming a learning set.

The idea as it formed was remarkably simple. I wanted to be part of a Learning Set to share thinking on creative leadership. The subject of ‘creative leadership’ was taken from some online research I had done in the mid-90s looking at applications of creativity in leadership. 

There was a clear time limit to the learning sets – six sessions – so that participants could make an explicit commitment.

The idea was tested out with an informal group of colleagues in the first instance. This was well received. Several people suggested to me that the learning sets would be stronger if they involved people who were not already known to each other. With this in mind I approached the Head of Human Resources for help. She agreed to send out the ‘flier’ to Human Resource leads in NHS organisations in the North West of England.

The letter seeking expressions of interest was intended to solicit sufficient interest to form one learning set. In the event there were well over 100 responses within two weeks. An untapped need had been identified. The challenge was one of determining how best to meet that need.

I was keen to develop an organic structure fit to the needs of each particular group. However, I lacked the confidence to challenge the advice I was being given. The traditional model of a Learning Set requires a facilitator to lead the process – this was the approach which was adopted. It took time to locate eight facilitators, but this was achieved and the Learning Sets began to meet.

From the outset there was an issue within the group of which I was a member. Was our group leader a facilitator or someone in control? It felt as though the role of facilitator took away from the autonomy of the group. I was keen to take the group into dynamic territory where it would develop its own agenda. I wanted to see what the archetypes would create. The facilitator, who set out a clear set of issues to be covered over the six sessions, resisted this approach.

The pitfalls of the approach then, were related to this tension over the existence of a facilitator and whether this was beneficial to the process.

From the outset, there was immense scope for building a sense of community, but this was not really progressed due to an overwhelming sense of over-dependence on one person. That person (me) had a full time job to fulfil, and was therefore not able to pursue newsletters and other communications channels to create a sense of a ‘movement’ being developed. This would have been the real strength of this initiative if it had been possible. As it was, there was no opportunity to communicate across the learning sets, other than through the facilitators.

This problem was one that I raised at a meeting of the facilitators half way through the six months set for the initiative. We agreed that a shared event would be useful to bring all the participants together and share experiences. It took some time to arrange this event, so it happened when most of the learning sets had reached the end of their time allocation. Nonetheless, it was an opportunity to experience some of the magic of the group event.

Although the various learning sets had each gone about things their own way, they had all seen the need for greater communication between the sets. Some felt that the sets would be a useful way to overcome the feelings of isolation often felt by managers within organisations. There was a general view that peer group support from outside the immediate environment was really helpful.

The shared event day had a feeling of celebration about it. There was a remarkably positive response to the process. The lack of focussed content did not appear to have been a problem – many of those involved suspected that this had been a deliberate decision (as it was). Some even queried whether it had been a conspiracy to see how those involved would react to the lack of structure.

In retrospect, there was clearly much scope for building on the model which was developed here. At the one-day event there was an expectation of magic, which became self-fulfilling to an extent. If a similar exercise were to be attempted, more focus would be given to the need for a clear strategy for communication and specific assignment of roles. It would also be critical to follow through the requirement that the groups should be self-managed (see ‘Maverick’ by Ricardo Semler, 1993) as this would have generated a significantly different community (see ‘Different Drum’ by M Scott Peck, 1987).