People First! with Morag Barrett

Welcome to this week's People First episode. And I am excited because I have not just one, but two amazing guests for you to listen and learn from. I am excited to welcome Nathalie Sabourin and Ron Cheshire, who are half of the authors of this amazing book, Codevelopment Action Learning for Businesses, which we will be discussing in the main body of our conversation. I will ensure that you can find out more about both Nathalie and Ron in the show notes below. But welcome, firstly, to People First. Well, thanks very much for inviting us, Morag. We're looking forward to it. Thank you so much, Morag. Fun. It's going to be a fun conversation. Well, Nathalie, I'm going to start with you. And as you both know, I open every episode with the same nosy question of when you were a child and you were thinking about all the adulting you were going to get to do. When you were a child, what was it that you wanted to be when you grew up? And essentially, what brought you to what you do today? Oh. It's such a wonderful question, you know, and thank you to have this chance to go back in time. It's the capsule, you know. And you know what, Morag, when I was young, all I wanted to do was to travel the world. And my big dream was actually to work in Japan. And I actually achieved that because when I finished university, I studied in finance. Not too sure I wanted to work in the field after studying in it for years. But I went and I had this amazing opportunity to work in Japan, in Tokyo, and met amazing people that are still my friends today. And I traveled throughout Southeast Asia. I backpacked. And now I have an opportunity with this book to, it's like full circle. We're gonna go back and travel the world with our book. So I am curious, before I go to Ron and ask that same question though, from Montreal, Canada, for those who don't know, of course everybody knew that. Why Japan? Why Japan? Why Japan? I was fascinated by... I had this opportunity when I was young to live in Europe, and Asia was always a place in the world that was really of interest, but Japan seemed like so different, so unique. such a culture to discover something completely new and also start my first, I had been doing various work terms and just have an opportunity internationally to work in a different environment. I look forward to sharing some more of that global experience that you've had with the coaching and the work that you do in leadership development. So, Ron, over to you then. When you were a wee lad, what was it that you wanted to be when you grew up and what's that story? Well, I really, you know, honestly, I didn't really have a fixed idea of what I wanted to become, but... early, I would say in early teens, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I had the opportunity or I was invited to teach skating, learn to skate programs and hockey. Of course, that's a popular sport here in Canada. And I went on actually to become certified as a national certified coach at the age of sixteen, a friend of mine. And a funny story to that is that after spending six months in a classroom with adults, we were two high schoolers, they decided that after we passed the exam that no longer the minimum age to be a certified coach was eighteen. So I have that always to remember, to come back to, is that I was a national certified coach before anybody else reached the age of eighteen. Me and my friend. That is just a powerful memory and experience to have. I think about all of the youngest to summit Everest, the youngest to pilot a plane, and the fact that it can't be repeated at this current stage. That's awesome. But it also started your journey then to executive coaching. So what moved you from sports coaching to executive and leadership team coaching in a corporate environment? That, well, that came many years later, many, many years later after a career in portfolio management where I led teams. And that's where, I mean, in, when we were living abroad, we were living in the UK and came back to Canada. I co-created a mentor program for the CFA in Montreal, and that fulfilled one of my, I guess, one of my interior needs to help and support people. And this was young professionals, and they were five to seven years of experience, and we were matching them with fifteen to twenty years of experience. So I started to mentor mentors and supervise all that program. And that fulfilled that, as I said, that desire to help people and to show people how they can collaborate and progress with time. okay well I'm excited to dive in and share our collective experiences and as a reminder to all I'm we're here to talk about co-development action learning for business and it was timely when I discovered your book because although I've been coaching leaders and teams for Twenty, thirty years. Oh, my goodness. That's such a big number. Earlier this year, I chose to go and continue some new studying to bring fresh perspectives. And your book was one of those that caught my eye. And then we got to having a conversation about it. And what's exciting about this is that the cow method that you outline, you've been using. for a long time in French-speaking world, but this is the first time you've written about it in English. So tell me a little bit about that genesis. Well, it's been a dream, Morag. I discovered CAL in two thousand and eleven when I was doing a lot of leadership development. And I was just like, wow. The first time I experienced it was in a very large insurance company and it was in a leadership development program and there was various training modules. And we initiated these leaders to Cal. And I just saw the magic of them co-creating solutions, building bridges, talking among themselves differently. And they all told me, Morag, you know, Nathalie, we really like this training for what we love. is co-development action learning. It brought us so much further and leaders from this organization that was international were coming together. They were really, As I mentioned, you know, bringing their projects and their goals and they were growing by learning from each other. And we saw the connectedness that we would not see in just in traditional training. So I said to myself, I have to dig deeper. and I started to implement this and there was no practical guide so in actually in I wrote the practical guide on cal which was the complementary to the first book that existed from adrian payette and and claude champagne and but the real vision was to bring cal to the world so I really wanted to uh create the first English book because CAL has been implemented in various countries. Now it's in various countries around the world, but it's for sure in this genesis, it was mostly in Francophone countries around the world. so just to be clear cal c-a-l the benevolent good cousin to how the evil computer but cal stands for co-development action learning c-a-l so let's start with the end in mind I know you've got a lot of research and case studies and you talk about those in the book too that demonstrate the impact of Cal. Why would somebody listening to this podcast, why should they be interested in learning more and potentially bringing Cal to their world or their teams? I would say that it's one tool that they can add to their toolbox to help people learn from each other. I think that's a really key component is the learning aspect of it. We see it implemented in team development. We see it implemented in leadership development programs for leaders. And we also see it in communities of practice. And in those three, learning is a key element. And, of course, it's your also other skills that we can talk about a bit later, but the active listening, powerful questioning, coaching skills that people use to get there. I don't know. Natalie, would you add something to that? Yeah, I think it's in today's world, you know, there's so much more need for innovation, Marag. The status quo is not working. So we need to find new ways for leaders to lead. We need to find ways as well for people to work together better. Every day that I go in an organization right now, Marag, people are asking me, we need to transform the way that we're working. It's just not working. The status quo, as I mentioned, is not working. We need to innovate. And also, what was working before is not guarantee of what's going to be working in the future. And learning, we need to constantly, constantly learn and relearn and unlearn. And how are you going to do it in the flow of work? So co-development action learning is an efficient methodology that really allows for this co-creation, bringing different perspectives, opening to new possibilities, because we need to accelerate transformation, but we need to do it positively. What I liked about that, you talk about co-development and collaboration. It's done with others, but it's also the book provides a very pragmatic outline for implementation. It allows us to do it as part of our everyday work, not just, oh, I've got Wednesday afternoon. I'm going to go and co-develop, do my Cal. No, you can build it into every single conversation and process to help you, to your point, innovate quicker. Yeah. So Ron touched on a couple of the behaviors, the acts of the listening and the questioning, but I know there are five components. Natalie, what are the five components that people will discover whether they're working with you or reading the book? well the um when you're looking at a co-development action learning really very very simply you know it's small groups it's small groups five or eight people that are going to be coming together and what's very unique it's that it's one person of this group And we're all coming in a learning mindset. We all have this goal where we want to move forward and we're faced with significant challenges and dilemmas. And we value also collective intelligence that we know that people from different perspectives will actually bring us some creative solutions, you know. So how we organize ourselves is one person will bring a project or a goal. So if it's a group of leaders, it can be around how can I lead my team more positively in this world? If it's entrepreneurs, it can be related to a challenge that they have related to their business or marketing. And the rest of the group will take on the role of consultant coaches and help the client coachee. And it's facilitated. It can be facilitated by an external facilitator or internally. And we have this methodology that creates the psychological safety because Morag, that's always what people are asking us. whoa, okay, it requires humility, you know, for someone to actually bring a dilemma to the group. But the methodology creates a psychological safety and it has principles of mutual goodwill and confidentiality and mutual respect and openness. So we need more of that to dialogue instead of debate and listening to each other's perspective before arriving to provide solutions to others. So for those who are listening, they may be familiar with some similar experiences like goldfish environments, the spotlight round where you literally are sitting there amongst your peers. You're saying, this is what I'm challenged with. And then there is a guided process that Cal leads them through that gets you different perspectives, helps to surface your own thinking about it, but ultimately finishes with a, so what are you going to do next? But within that, Ron, you've got a fairly structured seven-step process then that helps to surface the issues and help uncover new learnings. What does that look and feel like for the person who's in that spotlight round? Well, it starts with... Actually, we call it step zero. So it starts with the facilitator and the person that's playing the role of client coachee going through the topic and some questions to flush out because... Now, as Natalie pointed out, it's five to eight people, small groups, and it's over a period of ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes. So we want to be efficient and effective. So usually a client is going to present their topic in step one for about ten minutes. And even even prior to presenting the topic, everybody sets a learning intention. The facilitator, the client coachees, the consultant coachees. Everybody sets a learning intention. And then we move to after the client coachee has presented the topic, we move to step two, where there's a round of clarifying questions by the consultant coachees and That usually takes, what, ten to fifteen minutes. And then we move to round three or step three. And basically that's divided into two. One where we're reframing by the consultant coaches and reframing by the client coachee. Then step four is coaching. brainstorming where we're the client, the consultant coachees are giving ideas. And what's somewhat unique about Cal is that you're not only offering ideas, but you're also offering support. So when we do it in know whether it's online or or uh in person when we're using post-its um yellow post-its are for ideas and green post-its are for offers of support so uh someone will say look I I'm gonna this is my idea and this is where I'm gonna help be able to help you and then step five is um The development of the action plan by the client coachee. So concretely, there's an action plan that comes out. And then step six is reflection about whether it's by the team or the group, the individuals and collectively. And then we have, if you have a series of CAL sessions, you have step seven, which is the kind of the bridge between the two sessions. And that's a session where the client coachee comes back from the previous session. And that's accountability. That's the follow-up. So briefly, that's the seven steps. I mean, I love it because it's a guided journey that stops me, for example, getting stuck in, let's come up with idea one hundred and thirty five and I'm only just getting warmed up. Or other leaders who might go from hearing a problem statement to jumping to here's what we need to do. And things like your reframing are allowing us to clarify, did I actually hear the correct problem? problem statement or now that you've heard yourself share your problem statement do you want to rephrase it or narrow it down so that we're solving for the right problem and so those steps are deceptively simple but extremely powerful when used in combination yeah absolutely know you you kind of alluded to it in the sense where this is a leveler because the process is there and we've seen it with different hierarchies different and everybody's idea comes in there and then one idea is not weighted more than another idea and the other point that you that you you made is that we all no matter who we are tend to rush from problem to the solution very very quickly and some a lot of the times it's too quickly and so this this as a you know as as you are a team coach you know that nine times out of ten that's what you can help a team with is to slow down and really dig into the problem what is the real problem not the symptom but what is the problem yeah and move that And if I can give an example, last week I was facilitating a Cal session with a director of a large L&D team who was just completely overwhelmed by the fact that her mandate now had transformed from being local to being pan-Canadian, having the same level of resources and just being bombarded by all of these requests from everybody and not having the opportunity to have the right visibility of the work of everyone and really having a clear vision of where everybody had bandwidth and how her team at the end of the year could stop being overwhelmed and that everybody could more have a normal workload. And she came in extremely stressed that day. And her team, there was members of her team was in that group and other members that were coming from other sectors. And it was just incredible how just for her, going from the step one to the step three, She had changed one eighty in terms of how she had more calmness, had some temporary clarity. And seriously, I felt that we could have stopped the Cal session there and not going into the brainstorming. But it was so powerful for her to see the members of her team that was providing support to her on how to concretely solve this challenge that she was really taking on too much on our shoulders. And that's why I can feel even my own heart rate go up in empathy for them. But so from the step zero and step one, here's what I think the problem is and what I need to do to solve it. And there's too much and not enough time through to the reframing step was the reality of actually it's not all on your shoulders. You have this team and here's a way now to start sifting through all of those requests, make it manageable and scalable. Exactly. Wonderful. Exactly. Yeah. We, we, we see that, um, kind of two, two, one, two kind of versions of it, or two overall uses of it. One is to accelerate projects, but also another is the support group. We saw that during, unfortunately the pandemic, and we did a lot of co-development during the pandemic, um, online, obviously we did where we, we, We had twelve different co-development groups going on at the same time, and they were acting as more support groups, but some of them also were propelling and accelerating projects and things like that. So in businesses, that's it. It's like Ron had said, we see the three uses. And so for coaches that do group coaching, well, accompanying community of practices using CAL can be very innovative and very efficient. implementing CAL as well in team development. So after a team that if you're a team coach and you've helped a team co-create their vision, for example, their action plan to move forward, well, then you can use CAL to help them to learn how to better work together and activate all of these these projects that are often you know involving many team members or as we mentioned in leadership development journeys so either you see it just just cal sessions or you you can have a training session and then you alternate with a cal session that is very powerful And it's interesting, I think what you've showcased very well as well is that it might be seven steps within this five components, but the seven steps, eight if you include step zero, they have to take weeks and months to work through. You've already shown you can go from zero to seven. in ninety minutes or less when you're focused and you've got the scoping right for what's the problem we're here to solve. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. So for the folks who are listening to this, for whom we may have piqued their curiosity, I hope we've piqued their curiosity, how would they know that they have a something for which Cal would be well-suited to help them to navigate? I don't know which of you wants to answer that, but I'll put that out to the room. Well, Natalie, maybe you want to take that one for what is a good Cal topic? Oh, what is a goal? Well, I was more going to answer more like some of the winning conditions, you know, because for me, what's really, really important is that there is an alignment between with a purpose because a lot of individuals that we've coached with Cal, the number one mistake is actually that you love this methodology too much, that you don't step back and you don't identify, is there a clearly identified need? Is there a clearly identified purpose? So when we go back, are you looking to accompany a team, a business, an organization for more innovation? Or do you want to work on teamwork? Are you working also to create a culture, more of a learning culture? So for me, that's really, really important because you want to align your co-development sessions with various themes. So, for example, you know, as I mentioned in a team, why we want to do CAL, it's because that we want to better work together. And there is a reason for us to move from our different silos because we're very effective in our silos. But to be able to achieve what we need to achieve and to transform win. There's a high level of competition between individuals. In a context like that, you need to be able, like anything else, to put the right condition in place so that individual will want to experiment a new methodology. And you know, Morag, I've been an OD professional, a coach for many, many years, and I'm a strong believer in viral change. And I think you need to find where there is people that wanna work with you. It's for sure that there is groups of leaders that wanna innovate, that wanna try new things. So work with the people that wanna work with you. When you see that there's a business need, then find the right group and make sure that the group composition is gonna be right as well for that. Well, I'm glad you've mentioned that because it's not just having the right problem to solve or the right challenge to explore. It's making sure you've got the right people in the room. Otherwise, you run the risk of if you've got the usual suspects, you're going to get the same input you would have got. So why even bother with Cal? So how do you pick the folks to be in that room to take part in the process? Well, you need to have a percentage of people, Morag, that want to experiment something new and that want to grow and learn from each other. If you don't believe, if I have a group of leaders, let's say the vice president of operations, marketing and R&D or the directors of HR, finance and IT, and that I don't have individuals that believe that they can actually learn from each other, that's going to be a real challenge. That's going to be a real challenge. But you don't need to have a hundred percent. You'll never get a hundred percent, but it's always working to get that tipping point. also I think it's it it also acts as a it's a peer learning approach so there are going to be people in in the group that are less experienced than others and that's they're going to learn perhaps they're not the client but perhaps they're a consultant coach and they're going to start to learn what are the the types of factors that are leading to this this situation? What are the types of questions that the other leaders around them are asking? So there's a number of ways to look at it, but diversity, right? We want diversity of opinion at the beginning, diversity of ideas, and that's really key. So if you, as you said, if you have all the people thinking the same way, that's going to be less productive, I think. So as we come to the end of our time together, what's one message that you hope our listeners are taking away with regards to Cal? I think to try it is to adopt it. So really read the book. hope that this will be a spark we've really written it in a language that is accessible we've had many people that told us you know I took the plane and I I for an hour I wrote I read the first part of the book and then when I came back and now I want to find a few people where I can start to experiment it So, yeah, I hope to be a spark and to dare and try new things. And Ron, from you, what's one thing you hope people take away from this conversation and perhaps where else can they go to learn more about you and the work that the two of you are doing? Yeah, well, Our goal here, our objective here is to share this approach because we've seen it historically and we have the research to back it up, that it has a tremendous impact. And in today's complex world, we need the power of collective intelligence. And we also, when the growth or the rate of change is far greater than the rate of learning, we've got to try something different. So this is something different that you can add. And as we've mentioned, it's not the only tool in your toolbox, but it's something to try because it is very, very effective and very, very powerful. And so if you want to learn more about it, the book website is codevelopmentactionlearning.com. And on that website, we have a small little video walking you through the steps that you can use. We also have all kinds of other things there that you can see and you can purchase the book. You'll have the different links to purchase the book on different sites, different publishers all around the world. We'll make sure to include all of that information in the show notes. But as a reminder, this is the cover that you're looking for, co-development action learning for business. It is a powerful resource in of itself, but I also encourage you to get in touch with Ron and Natalie and the rest of the team so that you can learn more about bringing this to your team and your organizations. Thank you both for joining me here on People First. Thank you so much, Morag. Okay. Be well.