‘GWF exemplifies rare, thoughtful leadership’ – UK executive coach and author Megan Reitz
Megan Reitz, an associate fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and a professor at Hult International Business School whose research focuses on leadership and communication, recently visited GWF’s Hazyview campus.
We chatted to her about her impressions of her time with us, and her main takeaways from the session on Speaking Truth to Power she conducted with GWF leaders.
How did you come to be involved with GWF?
My husband, Steve, is part of the Chamberlain hardware business, which supports Good Work Foundation, so I’d heard about GWF’s work. Last year, I connected with Jo-Anne Hay (who manages special projects at GWF) and offered to help if I could. So I did a virtual session with one of their leadership cohorts, and then this year my family and I spent a week in Hazyview. I’m the biggest fan of Good Work Foundation!
What insights did you share?
I focused on an area of research I’ve been involved in for the last decade or more, called Speaking Truth to Power. It’s about our habits of when we speak up and when we don’t, and our habits of when we listen, who we listen to and who we don’t. That’s a core thing for future leaders to understand. So we had a really good session on that.
The young people in the leadership cohort that I spent time with really impressed me, and we had a fascinating discussion about their challenges around speaking truth to power within their communities. I probably learned more than they did: that there may be different contexts, but similar issues exist in businesses, organisations and communities across the world.
We spoke about the reasons why we stay silent, why we speak up and how we speak up in a way that can be heard. In the world of work that I’m involved in, it’s just rush, rush, rush, get on with it, get things done to a target and then wonder why it didn’t work. But GWF gets stuff done in a very thoughtful, relational manner.
Please share your impressions of GWF’s leaders.
One word that comes to mind is thoughtful. They do what they do incredibly thoughtfully with the resources they have. They take huge care in knowing what will actually work on the ground. They have a really intimate understanding of how they manage their resources and coordinate the logistics, but also understand how to build the connections that are so important in these communities.
So that was what struck me: this wonderful marriage of really good business management skills and insight, which means that what GWF does lands with the communities they’re working with. And the same goes for how they work with one another.
How do these observations align with your area of research?
It was really striking to see GWF’s morning circle, where all the facilitators gather in a big circle in that beautiful barn and just check in. Much of my research focuses on the power of pausing in what I call a pathologically busy world. Pausing to see one another as human beings, and connect with one another and your broader purpose. What ran through my whole experience with GWF was their wonderful capacity to set the compass again and again, so that they really understand what matters.
Some of my research is on two different forms of attention: one we call the doing mode, which is target- and goal-driven; and the other is the spacious mode, which is more expansive, receptive and looking outwards. The spacious mode of attention needs to tell the doing mode what to do, not the other way around.
In a lot of organisations I work with, the doing mode has gone mad and they don’t have the space to make sure they don’t end up as busy fools. But at Good Work Foundation, they have the space and they keep the space, with their morning circle and with the things that they do. And all their activity is driven by that wise understanding and connection, which is very rare.
Final thoughts about your time at GWF?
The energy of GWF is just lovely. The kids singing and dancing … I was there as a teacher, but I was thinking, “I am the student here, because I am learning so much.” It made me think about how much we get wrong in schools in the UK – we should be seeing the core of learning as fun, noticing when energy shifts and then changing it so that people can pay attention. It’s these basic foundations that have been lost in our mechanical busyness and our target-driven society.
Watch one of Prof. Reitz’s influential TED Talks here: How your power silences truth | Megan Reitz | TEDxHultAshridge
