Opening Insights
The PWI Co-Lab offers many tools and resources lacking in our modern-day education and experience. Be-ing, working and living within a Co-Lab environment provides the opportunity to transcend our vision and perceptions of life to develop true Level 5 Followship and Leadership skills – to better serve our businesses, organizations, schools, communities and humanity itself.
Level 5 Followship-Leadership Opportunity
Recently an opportunity arose in the Co-Lab. An assignment was given to address the concerns of a team member’s business failures, coupled with his passive-aggressive behaviors, poor communication and resistance to following directions (team goals).
Informational Insights
What began as an assignment to learn about the 4 Absolutes, changed into an opportunity to learn about Self-Authority, Self-Responsibility, Self-Accountability. By seizing the opportunity, the team began developing the Self-Regulating component of Sustainability (Self-Funding, Self-Perpetuating and Self-Regulating). This experience supported an environment of Self-Regulation in which team members:
- Expanded their perspective, focus and commitment to the team, to the collective mission
- Affirmed/reaffirmed professional and personal commitment to the goals of the Co-Lab team
- Defined/reassessed individual and collective boundaries in terms of priorities, goals, acceptable and unacceptable behavior and communication
- Reaffirmed and strengthened individual and collective commitments to be the change they want to see in the world - i.e. a mature, enthusiastic, committed, approachable/inviting and professional; grounded in the 4 Absolutes; part of a powerful team and part of a powerful global movement.
Self-Regulation
A key principle / skill that is experienced, and experientially learned, in the Co-Lab is the process of learning and developing the skill of Self-Regulation.
Self-Regulating is not about destroying a person, it's about building a person;
if they want to be built.
It is about defining the boundaries of self and others.
Self-Regulation is a crucial element many acknowledge is lacking in our communities, organizations, businesses and schools. As we self-evaluate our emotional intelligence and ability to deal with life on life's terms – Self-Regulation is our ability to captain our own ship, and in a professional sense (career advancement), learn how to build, sustain and grow our own fire.
Ages ago, our survival depended on a very simple piece of technology, fire. To build a fire you learned how to cut your wood, haul your wood, ignite your fire, protect it and maintain it. You learned from those around you and sometimes you learned by trial and error. Without fire, predators would come get you and you'd be eaten. Fire kept you warm, cooked your food and helped with tasks like tool-making. Those who could make fire and keep it alive, stayed alive. Those who didn’t met a Darwinian end.
Self-Regulation is our modern-day fire. It’s the skill of learning how to collaborate, communicate, learn, unlearn and re-learn. It’s the skill of learning how to run, how to fall, how to adjust your course (and why) and get up and keep running life’s race. Self-Regulation is about self-discipline and maturity rather than disciplinary action (punishment).
Self-Regulation is born of Self-Authority, Self-Responsibility and Self-Accountability (elements of maturity). Self-Accountability is when we learn from our experiences and develop Self-Regulating behaviors to make better decisions, to be the change we want to see in the world. Self-Regulation is a skill whose great value is eclipsed only by its recent scarcity. As a culture, we have lost these critical ingredients for Self-Regulation. Where does that leave us?
Becoming Self-Regulating
The good news is, that even without fire (Self-Regulation) we can survive well when we team up, but the bad news is we have forgotten how to do that. We’ve forgotten how to collaborate and so, we go it alone, but going it alone doesn’t seem to work for us. We still lack Self-Authority, Self-Responsibility and Self-Accountability, which means we learn nothing from our experiences.
We forgot how to make fire (Self-Regulate) and we forgot how to collaborate. Thus, in order to effectively develop the skills we need for growth, a collaborative environment is a must.
PWI Co-Lab Collaboration = Self-Regulation
Collaboration has become a buzzword, yet few organizations and people really know what it means. Collaboration is often experienced as a group of people coming together waiting for their chance to talk. Traditional collaboration sees the development of subgroups fighting to be right, rather than uniting together to obtain and attain the common goal (because one is never defined nor held).
To be a good team collaborator one must develop those research skills. Many people today think they are great researchers. The internet of things produces a false sense of being a proficient and effective researcher. The reality is that most of us aren’t, in fact we’re far from it. To be a proficient researcher, or information collector/organizer, we must have more than the whole internet’s worth of data. We must be able to incorporate some essential skills into our lives:
- Honesty: The ability to be honest – see and seek the whole truth.
- Selflessness: The ability to consider facts objectively, assessing the impact on others and then self.
- Purity of Intention: The ability to be clear in one’s intention and free of hidden agendas
- Reality: The ability to seek truth, see the world as it is not as we want it to be, and appreciate the intrinsic value that is.
These skills are learned in the Co-Lab. They define the cultural fabric of the Co-Lab, and the defining characteristics of a successful Co-Lab Team.
Self-Regulation: "Let No Problem Go To Waste"
The PWI Co-Lab offers a different experience, where collaboration is not only learned experientially, but discoveries are constantly being made. A place and space where Level 5 Followship-Leadership is fostered, nurtured and developed through a proven process that supports the development of collaboration for self-regulating teams and individuals. The blend of consulting, tools, resources and principles support the foundational fabric of the Co-Lab, which supports and focuses the team on the agreed-upon common goal. The common goal and principles come before personalities.
In the Co-Lab, mistakes and failures are looked at not as a disciplinary action, but as a self-assessment opportunity, an action that demonstrates self-regulation (a desire to examine, change and improve). Thus, Co-Lab teams become self-sustaining as they share authority, responsibility and accountability for individual and collective successes and failures. This means when problems arise with an individual or group, the team:
- Communicates concerns and problems (followship);
- Acknowledges and agrees upon the course correction needed - answer (followship);
- Defines the course that needs to be followed to correct the problem - solution (leadership); and
- Implements the solution (course) that needs to be followed to establish a new direction (followship-leadership).
This process supports the development of a culture that becomes Self-Sustaining: Self-Authority, Self-Responsibility and Self-Accountability. The team experiences true experiential learning, collaboration and progress. Procedures and policies of collaboration and communication can be assessed, and if it works we do it again. What we build here will need to be built again.
These principles are not taught in schools or universities. Things like working together, learning and leveraging. In the Co-Lab, we learn that everyone’s assessment and experiences have value.
Self-regulating is not about destroying a person; it's about building a person, if they want to be built.
Self-Regulation and Experiential Learning
A Collaborative Self-Regulating environment allows for true experiential learning regardless of learning styles, brain dominance or intellectual strengths or weaknesses, because the common goal is always maintained. In experiential learning, we create the event, connect the dots and explain the perspective of the framework of a model. We can go from the finite to learn the big picture so we can begin to evoke big-picture-thinking. We can ensure that no situation big or small gets overlooked or devalued.
We have an experience, we acknowledge its value, we recognize the necessary changes, then participate in effectively implementing the change. We put the experience into a bigger perspective so we can grasp the fullness, thus we can connect more dots, thus becoming more intelligent. This is what Co-Lab Collaboration is all about!
Possibilities for Consideration
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- Want to be aware of,
- Should become supportive of,
- Would want to be active in this topic?
Add Your Insight
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI