Moose Heads on the Table

By Karin Tenelius and Lisa Gill

What does leadership look like in a company with no bosses? How do you develop a culture that allows self-managing organisations to thrive? What mindset and relational shifts are required? In this book, the authors share stories and insights from nearly twenty years of coaching teams and organisations to become self-managing. Rather than looking at complicated self-management frameworks and models, these pages reveal a perspective of organisational transformation based on the simple but powerful premise of facilitating different kinds of dialogues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TUFFleadershiptraining
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9789198628418

Karin Tenelius

I början av nittiotalet utarbetade Karin Tenelius en coachingmetodik som sätter fokus på det förhållningssätt en människa har – något som visade sig vara avgörande för om personen fick ett arbete eller inte. Tusentals jobbsökande i arbetsmarknadsprogram runt om i Sverige har blivit coachade av Karin Tenelius i denna metodik, förutom arbetsmarknadscoacher, arbetsförmedlare och karriärcoacher.Varje människa som vill ut på arbetsmarknaden är kapabel att själv ta ansvar för sitt jobbsökningsprojekt. Med respekt, empati, lyhördhet och rak kommunikation kan cachen stödja den jobbsökande till ett nytt arbetet.

Book preview

Tenelius

Part 1

Three case studies of

transforming companies as a

consultant or interim CEO

1. Freys Hotel: a successful hotel gets a surprise boost from self-management

‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.’

Marcel Proust

In 1999 I was working as a freelance consultant taking on fairly traditional coaching and service training assignments when I was contacted by a friend of mine. Annika Tell was the manager of two small hotels in the centre of Stockholm called Freys Hotel and although the business was profitable and doing well, she was looking for something that would give the employees a bit of an energy injection. So one quiet Sunday in September I ran a standard, four-hour service training session. As I often did, I mentioned Ricardo Semler’s book Maverick which I used to call ‘the bible for the world’s most unusual workplace.’ At one point I asked the group, ‘If you had the authority to make all these changes you’re talking about, would you?’ The room was silent. It was a magic moment because I could feel the energy in the room, just below the surface, ready to be awakened. Annika was intrigued and immediately went away and read Maverick, learning about how Semler had successfully transformed Semco through democratising its workforce and giving frontline employees more decision-making power. She came back to me, suddenly firing on all cylinders. ‘Let’s do it!’ she said. I was excited. I saw this as my first real opportunity to put these ideas into practice and gather proof that it could really work. Annika is a wonder for putting ideas into action. She talked to the owner of the hotel and got carte blanche. It didn’t take much for the hotel employees to be on board as Annika was well-liked and known for her confidence and creative ideas.

Lying in wait

The process began in September with me facilitating discussions with the team to explore what they needed and what was getting in their way to achieve this. We discovered, after some probing, that some people felt the culture wasn’t as open as others did. I noticed that simply naming this and giving space for the group to reflect on this lack of openness actually resulted in people starting to talk more openly with each other. However, it was tentative and many others still seemed hesitant. Team meetings tended to be long and