Overview
This is an advanced leadership workshop that presents a concept and approach that both enhances the ability of a leader, and the capabilities of the organizations they lead. How do we ensure that teams strive to achieve outcomes in the most effective manner, even when it’s a bit different than the instructions they receive? Instilling, accepting, supporting and defining the boundaries of “Intelligent disobedience” is one approach. The term intelligent disobedience comes from the world of seeing eye dogs. In training these service pets, Intelligent Disobedience is defined as: ‘a concept where any service animal trained to help a disabled person goes directly against their owner’s instructions in an effort to make a better decision’.
You actually don’t want the seeing eye dog to follow all of your instructions, or disaster could occur. The same concept applies to leadership in organizations. You want your best team members to make better decisions, with the information available at that moment, to increase and enhance your ability to serve your clients. Success follows quickly when a team is enabled with this concept, and applies with defined guidelines. Through stories, guidelines and tools, the workshop enables leaders to embrace intelligent disobedience conceptually, and define approaches suitable to the organization.
The outcome? Expanded capabilities, enhanced team morale, improved client perceptions, and reduced implementation time for initiatives!
The Topical Outline
- Define intelligent disobedience and its application to managing teams
- How to define, instill and support intelligent disobedience in your organization
- Discuss the conditions for granting intelligent disobedience rights to staff members, while creating a growth path for high potential staff
- Defining boundaries for what is “intelligent” in the Intelligent Disobedience concept and ensuring staff members can apply this concept appropriately
- Evaluating outcomes from acts of intelligent disobedience and refining intelligently disobedient processes
- Derive an assessment process for your, and your team’s readiness for intelligent disobedience