Rituals

Designing for role clarity: An essential leadership skill

By Gemma Jiang and Joan Lurie.

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1. Gemma Jiang (biography)
2. Joan Lurie (biography)

How can leaders design roles and role relations within their project teams? How can leaders recalibrate and re-align role relations as their project contexts shift? Why is designing for role clarity an essential leadership skill, beyond technical and interpersonal skills?

Just as we sign contracts outlining job descriptions and authority when starting a new position, a similar role contracting process should be initiated at the beginning of each project. This ensures that everyone understands their specific responsibilities and authority within the project context. This practice is particularly crucial when team members have overlapping roles outside the project. For instance, in one project, a faculty member might lead while their department chair takes on a supporting role. How should these two define their project roles to distinguish them from their ongoing department chair–faculty relationship?

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Listening-based dialogue: Circle of dialogue wisdom / Diálogo basado en la escucha: Círculos de diálogo entre saberes

By Adriana Moreno Cely, Darío Cuajera Nahui, César Gabriel Escobar Vásquez, Tom Vanwing and Nelson Tapia Ponce

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1. Adriana Moreno Cely; 2. Darío Cuajera Nahui; 3. César Gabriel Escobar Vásquez; 4. Tom Vanwing; 5. Nelson Tapia Ponce (biographies)

A Spanish version of this post is available.

How can marginalised knowledge systems really make themselves heard in collaborative research? What’s needed for research decolonisation to properly recognise Indigenous and local knowledge? How can power imbalances be bridged to ensure that everyone has an equal voice?

We describe the “circle of dialogue wisdom” as a methodological framework to reconceptualise participation, empowerment and collaboration.The framework has 6 phases, which should be seen as spiral and iterative rather than linear.

The six phases, shown in the figure below are:

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Conditions for co-creation

By Gabriele Bammer

This is part of a series of occasional “synthesis blog posts” drawing together insights across blog posts on related topics.

Gabriele Bammer (biography)

What is required for effective co-creation, especially between researchers and stakeholders? In particular, what contributes to a productive environment for co-creation? And what considerations are relevant for deciding who to involve?

Twelve blog posts which have addressed these issues are discussed. Bringing those insights together provides a richer picture of how to achieve effective co-creation.

What makes a productive environment for co-creation?

A good starting point is to be working in an environment and organizational culture that support co-creation and to have sufficient financial, personnel and other resources, as pointed out by Kit Macleod and Arnim Wiek.

Dialogue-based processes are often an important part of co-creation and they need to be established as a generative space, focused on synergy, not conflict.

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Powhiri: An indigenous example of collaboration from New Zealand

By Rawiri Smith

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Rawiri Smith (biography)

Collaboration is important in New Zealand as a method of bringing communities together to work on complex problems. A useful collaborative model is the Powhiri, practiced by Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, for hundreds of years.

The formal welcome to an area in New Zealand is a Maori process known as the Powhiri. The Powhiri recognises the mana of all the participants. One of the most important values of the Maori people is manaaki, or caring for the mana of everyone. The Maori word mana means the importance associated with a person. The performance of a Powhiri acknowledges the importance of a person being welcomed to an area.

The deeper meaning behind the Powhiri process gives more meaning and indicates what should be occurring through the Powhiri.

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Co-creation without systems thinking can be dangerous

By Gerald Midgley

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Gerald Midgley (biography)

Why does the theory and practice of co-creation need to be informed by systems thinking? Co-creation without a thorough understanding of systems thinking can be deeply problematic. Essentially, we need a theory and practice of systemic co-creation.

Three key things happen in any co-creation:

  1. It is necessary for a diversity of perspectives to engage.
  2. There is the synergistic innovation that results from this engagement.
  3. The innovation is meaningful in a context of use.

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