Attending The Leadership Challenge Workshop

Today, Angie and I head for Sonoma, where Brent, Ken, and I will attend The Leadership Challenge for 4 days.
The first two days will be spent as participants in the workshop. The second two days we will go through the process to become certified instructors of the course.

I've seen Leadership Challenge twice before.
I provided cultural support for a colleague who delivered the
course in Taiwan and Singapore.
It's a well designed class, based on an excellent book, and went over very well.

Data makes all the difference. If this same material (which can be pretty touchy-feely) was delivered to an executive audience without data, they would tear the walls down.
But a spoonful of data helps the emotions go down, it seems.

I'll update this post each day, with my observations.

Sunday, June 22nd

We drove up to Sonoma today.

It was 83 when we left Santa Clara, 59 when we passed through San Francisco, and 85 when we reached Sonoma - a good day for a top-down drive in the PT Cruiser.

We checked into our hotel, wandered around the Plaza, and then stopped at the 'northern-most mission in the California mission system'. It was closed, but had the oldest looking cactus we've ever seen.

Here is a picture of one of its flowers.

We then had an excellent dinner at the El Dorado Kitchen. Angie had halibut (the waitress told us that it was Rachel Ray's favorite dish) and I had tenderloin. And mojitos.

Monday, June 23

On Monday we explored the town, which is really nice. It's got a "Marty McFly Clock Tower Middle America" vibe about it. Good place to raise kids, I suspect.

Ken and Brent showed up and we had Mexican for dinner.
Right across the street were horses - it's that kind of town.

I can't remember the last time I got to pet a horse.... South Africa, perhaps? But I got to pet one today.

Tuesday, June 24
Class started today. It's a big group - about 25. Half our group are corrections officers - makes for a good sanity check. My biggest problem is a manager with a cycletime problem.
Their biggest problem is a murder-suicide in cell block 8. Ummm... yeah....

Amazed me to hear how spiritual and positive about the human condition these guys are. Both at our table talked about how 'prisoners are humans'. Pretty cool.
I'm not always sure that executive think front-line employees are human, so it's startling to hear officers with such a humanistic view.

The class itself is good, but struggles to compete with the attendees.

I once attended a Picasso exhibit in Boston and told Angie, as I watched the people look at the paintings, "I don't find any painting to be as interesting as a human face".

That's how I felt about today. The material is good.... but no material can be as interesting as the material of human drama. More lessons can be learned by listening (really listening) to life than by reading a book.

We had dinner at Mary's pizza with Mark Springer, a new friend from Montana.
Angie and I took a quick walk around the plaza, where the farmer's market was in progress.

We had a corn dog (first ever for either of us). It was highly recommended and was reallllly good.
So was the pizza we had afterwards. Yeah, a pizza and a corn dog....

Wednesday, June 25th

Here's a photo of Angie, Ken and Brent at the Swiss Hotel and Restaurant in Sonoma.

Today, we completed our Leadership Challenge Participant Session. Good class, good teachers, good insights. Well worth the time. We all look forward to becoming facilitators in this material over the next few days.

Thursday, June 26th

My new friends from CDCR
(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
Dale, Eddie, Dennis, Ken, me, Todd, Cindy, Ralph

Now it's time to commit to the material. We have to stand up and deliver 20 minutes of content. My section covers Practice 2: Inspire a Shared Vision.
Teach-backs are my favorite part of facilitator training. It's very rewarding to watch a number of people provide a new 'window' into the material.
Often, when they start, I think, "I would never do it this way. What are they thinking?" By the time they finish, however, I'm thinking, "Wow! I'm going to do it this way."

Today was no exception. All the presenters (and this isn't always the case) were authentic and consistent with the material. As I result, I found some great ideas for delivering the material myself.
My section went well. I tried an exercise from the book that I'd never seen before. I wanted to see how it played out live. It turned out very well, so I'll use it with my first session.

It's great getting a safe environment to experiment in.

Friday, June 27th

Apparently, one of us is "Leadership Allen".
This photo is with Mark Springer. Mark heads up a company in Montana that does disaster recovery.

I've spent quite a bit of time with Mark over the past few days, and learned a lot from from his curiosity, energy, and intensity. We've made plans to spend some time with Mark to share some of our practices and tap into his expertise in crisis management.

I don't want to downplay our standard business 'crisis', because any business decision in our company effects 6,000 employees directly and countless others indirectly - but talking to Mark about the work behind disaster recovery puts our problems into perspective, which is always a good thing.

Today, we did 'speed-leads' - 3 to 5 minutes teach-backs of the material - with video cameras running. Again it was a lot of fun. So many great presentations.

I have to comment on Todd's presentation. Todd is one of my new corrections friends. He started his presentation by falling on the ground and proclaiming, "Everytime I fall down, I'm 6 feet 4 inches closer to success." True words demonstrated with conviction.

I'm still digesting all that I took in over these four days.
By all, I mean the material, the Somona Valley, the wine, the food, the time with Ken and Brent, the new friendships, the experience of watching others present, and the ambiance that you only get in a room full of facilitators who believe in the material.

That's a lot... I'm sure I'll have many comments in days to come.