The leadership project“Leading with Passion and Purpose”A co-creation of GIZ and LBSNAAGermany / India 2014

FLYING HIGHPROFUNDITY

WITH

EditorDeutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbHSitz der Gesellschaft: Bonn und Eschborn, Germany

Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 40 Dag-Hammarskjöld-Weg 1-553113 Bonn, Germany 65760 Eschborn, GermanyTelefon: +49 228 44 60-0 Telefon: +49 61 96 79-0Fax: +49 228 44 60-17 66 Fax: +49 61 96 79-11 15

E-Mail: info@giz.de, Internet: www.giz.de

Responsible:Hinrich MerckerDeutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH,Academy for International Cooperation (AIZ), BonnFriedrich-Ebert-Allee 40, 53113 BonnResponsible project team “Strengthening Management Capacities for International Cooperation”: Dr. Christine Bigdon, Anita Sharma, Ziaul Hoda, Varupi GuptaGIZ India

Text: Petra van Laak, www.text-vanlaak.deTranslation: Nancy Chapple, www.chapple.deDesign: Tino Umlauft, www.bildhaus-potsdam.dePicture credits: title / ©Dmitry Pichugin - fotolia.com, wagon wheel / © nilanewsom - fotolia.com, Yatra Patra / Tino Umlauft,all other photos / Mohan Dhamotharan and Ziaul Hoda

Bonn, January 2015

3 stakeholders, 1 co-creation process

The framework: German development cooperation

The participants: Stakeholder 1:

GIZ/AIZ (Academy for In-ternational Cooperation)/Lernwerkstatt Leader-ship Development. Focus: leadership for global responsibility.

Stakeholder 2:

GIZ in Delhi.Focus: the “Competence in Motion” leadership programme.

Stakeholder 3:

Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA). Focus: leadership training for top positions in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).

The objective: To develop a leadership programme for future leaders in India using co-creation. The basis is the canon of values named by LBSNAA: self-awareness, people first, leading others, integrity.

And incidentally: it was supposed to come about quickly as well.

Hinrich Mercker, AIZ

“The concept of leadership has changed a great deal. We are letting go of the image of the hero who leads, and moving towards an idea of lead-ership as a joint undertaking.”

workshop participant, day 1

“The leadership programme is intended to concen-trate on the question ‘why’. If the focus is only on ‘how’ and ‘what’, we restrict ourselves to the man-agement aspects of leadership behaviour. Asking the question ‘why’, in contrast, leads to addressing values and objectives.”

A leadership academy in the north of India. 186 young people, educated at the highest academic level. They are poised to take on leadership responsibility in district-level administration. A task like this is no trifling matter: the population in the districts ranges between 2 and 5 million inhabitants. These young managers are trained for two years by the LBSNAA, the renowned Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. May 2014. The 186 participants come together on the LBSNAA campus in Mussoorie at an altitude of 2,000 metres. Ahead of them: the Himalayan mountain range and a remarkable programme: “Leading with Passion and Purpose: Serving People by Leading Self and Others.” When the two-and-a-half day programme is over, each participant will have changed a little. In a country in the process of systematically training leaders, the willing-ness to change can be put to good use.

Anita Sharma, GIZ India

“For this approach to leadership you need people who are keen to learn, who enjoy a continuum of learning, who are prepared to constantly adapt such programmes to new requirements.”

More than just a change of air

THE PRINCIPLES OF CO-CREATION

It seems so easy – but the co-creation process works only if built on a solid foundation:

− seeing each other as equal partners

− listening to each other, treating each other in a respectful manner

− not wanting to sell a model – there is in fact none

− having the will to adapt conceptual considerations to actual circumstances

− acting in a competence-based and value-led manner

− being prepared to re-design a concept – the constructivist approach

− making open offers – each stakeholder decides whether he or she wants to take on an approach or not

− placing trust in partners that they will drive the project forward themselves

Fast-paced process, innumerable insights

The GIZ presents the conceptual founda-tions to those from the LBSNAA involved in the co-creation process.

New Delhi5-6 February 2014

Mohan Dhamotharan, facilitator

“We see our task as framing a dialogue that enables the partners to design their own purpose. Scope must be created for all participants to develop their own view of the world.”

A top-level delegation from the LBSNAA visits the AIZ in the context of the programme “Strengthening Manage-ment Capacities for International Cooperation“ to get informed about the academy’s methodological and didac-tic approaches and leadership approach. The request to jointly develop a leadership module follows.

Bonn / Bad Honnef21-23 October 2013

If an intervention does not touch a person’s core, it will not help them critically examine their attitude, let alone change it. This is the strategy: participants are supported through the process of self-reflection, a prerequisite for being able to take the lead oneself. That’s why the programme’s sub-line is “Leading Self” – and only then “Others”. During the programme, the participants pass through three stages:

Stage 1: The “I level” (basic idea: Leadership has something to do with self-man-agement.)

Stage 2: The “team level” (basic idea: It’s about the people for whom we bear responsibility and the people with whom we intend to jointly achieve results.)

Stage 3: The “world level” (basic idea: Leader-ship has something to do with global responsibility and the constant question about one’s own role in the world.)

Training of Trainers (ToT). The teach-ing staff of the LBSNAA takes on the challenging task of being the trainers in this unusual programme. They will later be the trainers and facilitators of the individual modules that constitute the LBSNAA’s cur-riculum.

Start of the co-creation phase. The stakeholders meet several times to find out exactly what the subse-quent trainers and participants in the leadership programme need. Many phone calls and e-mails are exchanged.

The programme was conducted for 186 trainees of the LBSNAA, split into 7 participant groups within the scope of their training phase 1 (induction training).

Mussoorie14-16 April 2014

New Delhi / MussoorieFebruary 2014

Mussoorie5-8 May 2014

The “Leading with Passion and Purpose” approach

The AIZ’s didactic principles form the basis for the pro-gramme approach. They include:

1Ownershipand self-organisation/-steering

4Experiential spaces

7Comparison of systems

2Learning support/guidance

5Self-reflection

8Learning as a co-construction

3The attitude as the centre

6Multiple perspectives /change of per-spectives

9Networking

The multi-faceted group methods, to some extent un-familiar to the participants, were an important element of the leadership workshop. They led to an open, lively and creative prevailing mood among the young men and women. The individual tools and methods applied in the 2.5 days have varying conceptual ideas behind them. A tool is only of value, however, when it can be adapted to particular requirements. For that reason, on the one hand, new tools were designed. On the other, best practices from the AIZ TOOL BOX (Leadership for Global Responsibility) were adapted so they were suitable as instruments for achieving the objectives of the leader-ship project “Leading with Passion and Purpose”.

Yatra Patra Journaling as self-reflective writing

Where do I come from, and where do I want to go? The future managers address these questions for themselves in terms of “Leading Self”. The method of journaling, self-reflective writing, lends itself to this endeavour. The team developed the “Yatra Patra” fanfold for the 2.5-day workshop. The term derives from the Sanskrit and in essence means the document of a journey. There is also an underlying connotation of a personal letter. One side of the fanfold has a timeline with the life stages childhood, youth, education, etc. – ending with the concept of “legacy”, namely what will persist of the individual. The other side of the fanfold has terms leading to a basic understanding of one’s own being, (future) visions, includ-ing for instance objectives, me in 2025, challenges, skills, personal progress.The participants are encouraged in the course of the work-shop to embark on the journey to themselves with the help of this travel document. It is intended that they keep working on their personal “leadership journal”, completing the itinerary, if desired to exchange with each other about it (e.g. on a “dialogue walk”). This self-reflective approach is based on the principle that only someone who knows him- or herself well can clearly articulate goals and im-plement them appropriately, i.e. for the collective good.

Surprising, inspiring, moving

participant, day 2

“I surprised myself, as I would never have thought I could make something out of model-ling clay that my colleagues would actually rec-ognise. More than that: we complemented each other and designed future landscapes.”

Sanjeev Chopra, Acting Director LBSNAA

“In the future it won’t be compe-tition that’s important, but rather cooperation.”

Ram Kakani,trainer, docent LBSNAA

Cooperation between the LBSNAA and the GIZ has grown. At the end of 2014 the jointly developed module “Passion and Purpose: Serving People by Leading Self and Others” was taken over in the curriculum of the Indian leader-ship academy. The GIZ has been pleased to be able to support the preparatory “Training of Trainers” course. What the stakeholders involved can rely on: a tested, evaluated and documented cooperation model for co-cre-ation processes in the area of leadership development.

One of the 24 wagon wheels at the Konark Sun Temple. It was chosen as the symbol for the leadership project “Competence in Motion” because it represents movement, the path and making progress. The path of learning and capacity building also never end and are in constant flux.

“I’m impressed by the leverage effect that interventions like this leadership programme can have. In day-to-day practice, our graduates need to address many challenges. For instance, they must support all children in getting the possibility to at-tend a school. This is not just a question of skills – they can be acquired – it’s about the right attitude. The programme can effectuate a change in one’s own attitude, and thus a change in how one behaves. This carries forward through all the work like a golden thread.”

Does it continue? And how!