LDD is trying to keep the light on.

Reflections from Al Innes, Research Development Manager, College of Medicine, University of Edinburgh

“This learning is catalytic; it is a toolkit that you can apply at different scales or will enhance what you are already doing.

The format of this learning is a fresh way of thinking and opened me up to see other people differently.

I recognised a lot of the activities and behaviours we learned about in the training, but I did not have the language (previously) to describe them.

Since the training, I can now identify resistance behaviour myself, and I have noticed quite easily using the language to speak with people about resistance or lowering the waterline.

I have used the learning when designing activities and in making agreements and navigating decisions, identifying resistance, and gaining consensus. So, it’s embedded and that is definitely a shift.

I remember by third day of the training feeling very different than I had even at the end of the second day, and feeling that the third day felt like an enormously valuable space to have. Suddenly it felt like the learning cemented in, there were Eureka moments.

This is teaching you about human beings and how we exist with each other in many layered ways that are fundamental to collaboration. I think this is missing from other leadership programmes. Group decision making isn’t often an element to leadership training in the way LDD is taught.

In more typical leadership trainings, it’s about what you want to achieve and how you can use resources including other human beings to achieve those ends and influence others, and even circumnavigate other people’s needs in order to achieve your own, rather than engaging in a transparent dialogue.

This training is not about the single individual in this way. It’s about how can you transparently have a dialogue and understand it to reach consensus. So, it engenders trust. I think the fear people have about group decision making or consensus means you can get this paralysis - everyone sits on the fence or no decisions ever get made.

Whereas the more people learn to trust (the LDD) process, the more they're likely to say: “well, do you know what? I know that decisions are going to be made with openness, because we have a format of dialogue, and can trust the people in leadership to listen.” It’s then much easier to make a decision.

It's a kind of philosophy; my brain was rewired into this thinking of what's the other possibility here? What could this other person be thinking? What might be motivating them? Where are they coming from? What's the context? And the ability to step back and look at both sides of an argument.

A novel insight that I didn't I didn't anticipate, but I enjoyed, was letting myself experience how other people received it - watching their journey, some people being really open and receptive to other people being a little bit more hesitant, and totally disagreeing with people on things. I liked having my own mind changed.

That was a quite a nice experience, you suddenly start to feel that there is some plasticity in your thinking. And there's definitely something about seeing other people in my team pick up the learning and see them grow and change.

LDD is trying to keep the light on, it is saying that if you stop listening to other people, it is not good for you. It’s about recognising difference and that we need renewal.”