One of our working principles at MACED is that our organizational workplace culture impacts how effective we are in our work. Our internal working group, the Culture Building Studio (CBS), helps develop thoughtful and intentional training and other opportunities for staff. In mid-September, the CBS asked MACED staff to come together at Natural Bridge State Park for the Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams® training led by a group called Roger Schwarz & Associates.
This training focused on mutual learning, which Schwarz defines as “a shared leadership approach for working with others to achieve results.” Underlying the mutual learning approach are five values: transparency, curiosity, informed choice, accountability and compassion. Schwarz advocates that adopting these mutual learning values as a mindset can help teams steer through challenging situations, including ones that may be high-stakes or emotional.
As an organization that is committed to a just transition for Central Appalachia, MACED values strong results and recognizes that achieving results that are meaningful to people and places in need is often challenging and complex work. Roger Schwarz writes in his book The Skilled Facilitator that “the more complex the organization and the task, the more it is essential that the people charged with solving the problems… have the skills —and more importantly the mindset—to work together effectively.”
Moving through the training together as a staff has helped us come to a shared understanding of ways we can work better together—both within our teams at MACED and within communities in the eastern Kentucky region. As we reflect on our past five years with the upcoming publication of our 2013-2018 impact report (stay tuned here), and go into our strategic planning process for the next five years of work, this shared framework for problem solving will prove a powerful skill for MACED.
To learn more about our workplace culture, please visit this past story of Appalachia here.
