Over the last three months i’ve been running a prototype of a very large Leadership programme, built upon principles of Scaffolded Social Learning. In this type of work, there is no ‘taught’ content per se, but there is a structure – or rather a scaffolding of spaces, inputs, provocation and support, within the arms of a community, to facilitate dialogue. In these final two weeks of the programme, the focus is on ‘sense making and storytelling’, to capture an individual narrative of learning, alongside a collective and co-created one.
Within the structure of the programme there have been nine ‘research’ activities, using both templates and free writing exercises, to generate ‘postcards’, snapshots of data along the way, and now, at the end, i’m encouraging and supporting people to weave these into their story.
Interestingly, this is the first programme in which i’ve also used Generative AI to weave collective narratives from the community inputs as we travel.
As part of #WorkingOutLoud, i’m sharing some of the context and provocations of the work here. For these final two weeks i’m sharing a document with the group for them to complete – or deface. The introduction says the following:
Fill in every page that sparks your interest. Some of them or all of them.
This journal is not in order. Start wherever you like. Cross out what you like.
Graffiti it, deface it. Make it your own.
Use the things you created along the way to help – those maps and stories you drew and wrote.
Share with each other – write for each other. Agree and disagree. If you have found the trust to do so.
Cheat if you can find a way – ask for help if you need it.
Decide what to carry forwards.
Decide what you can leave behind.
I first used this ‘graffiti’ approach in ‘The Trust Sketchbook’, which turned out to be a challenging publication in all sorts of ways! Wildly over budget and beset by production issues, it was my first attempt to weave personal narrative around the research data. The latest iteration of this was ‘The Humble Leader’, which was far more refined as an artefact, but still essentially using the book as a canvas for reflection.
The only really ‘hard’ part of the structure is that it do ask them to take three things away – but what they are is entirely open. It could be doubt, uncertainty, a friend, or a headache.
Interestingly, in the dialogue around the journal so far, there has been strong engagement around what may be seen as the more abstract questions, like ‘where are your borderlands’, where is the graffiti in your Organisation.
The other things i’m doing here is giving them space to leave something for the following cohort – an answer, a question, a doubt, or an escape route. Again, it’s abstract, because i’m really trying to support the metacognitive process, the reflection as to how they themselves have made a journey into uncertainty and, perhaps, out of the other side.
Learning is about fracture, disturbance, doubt. Guiding people through this, and giving them the narrative tools to author themselves out of is, is part of the design in a Social Learning approach.
julianstodd
Julian Stodd's Learning Blog 