Kerry Woodcook's Agility Narrative on relational systems

The Agility Narratives

We are really pleased to welcome Kerry Woodcock to the Agility narratives to talk about her personal journey as an advocate of change and the challenges she sees for organizations in being responsive to opportunity and change.

Kerry leads by holding and challenging leaders, organizations and social systems to amplify the power of relationship

Weaving together innovations from change leadership, adult development and systems coaching, she coaches leaders and teams to develop collective leadership capacity.

Kerry is a great story teller - how curiosity, connectedness and separation was a core experience growing up in a market town in Northern part of UK. How it was built upon living in a village in the Eastern Arc mountains, Tanzania for four years in forestry reservation.
How change makers are people embracing introspection, and reflection. How she feels the villains are the things that get in the way of introspection and reflection and awareness...
I found the talk challenging, thoughtful with deep gut level concepts like a time for pause, space in between, fascination, curiosity, connectiveness, being separate, introspection and reflection, relational systems... ". Enjoy!

0:00 - Welcome to The Agility Narratives Podcast and first question
1:42 - Kerry's personal story - early reflections on influences that developed her curiousity
4:09 - Being a lightsprite! Being fascinated by ourselves and the space in between. That is where the possibilities come from.
5:33 - Living in one village in the Eastern Arc mountains, Tanzania for four and a half years (Forest Reservation)
8:19 - Being alone, separate and connected - Travels between Tanzania, UK and then to Canada and coaching
11:23 - Exploring and finding the right match for coaching approach "the space in between"
12:38 - Context for the Agility Narratives on Social intelligence and the third relationship systems intelligence - this is about tapping into what is trying to happen
14:15 - Tools to make the invisible visible and developing those skills within leaders
15:29 - The Agility Narratives - the protoganist is The HR & OD leader / change maker
18:23 - The relational dynamics of conflict with people coming from different positions and responding to change
20:20 - Change leaders are those that are willing to look inside themselves, their systems and teams... and are working with others in the organization
21:55 - The Agility Narrative Theme - The dance of Separate and connected at the same time AND being introspective and reflective at the same time
22:55 - The dance - your impact as a leader. - systems depend on people playing internal & external roles and understanding their power
24:55 - Role confusion - Competitive roles .v. collaborative roles
25:14 - Experience with environments that have different levels of separateness and connectiveness
27:20 - The villains are the things that get in the way of introspection, reflection and awareness of yourself and the systems
28:23 - Fear and exploring the low dream
30:00 - What is the antidote to fear? Stepping into purpose and meaning
31:18 - If clients can't get past fear, what is at stake for clients and the industry?
33:11 - role of ecosystems in moving towards a stronger relational systems approach?
35:01 - Advice to leaders who feel stuck - Starting with their fears - allowing them to get curious about them
37:09 - The call to action is to do the introspective and reflective work
38:46 - A time for pause - From the pandemic, people are considering how do they want to connect with the world, social justice and climate...
40:40 - Introspective - can't just stay with us as individuals but needs to expand to us as a collective
42:12 - Thank you Kerry for getting to think about some themes of the conversation - pause, fascination, curiosity, relational systems and ecosystems.