Episode Transcript
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0:08
Welcome to the Aid for Aid Workers Leadership Podcast.
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I'm Torrey Peace, a former aid worker, now leadership coach, whose mission is
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to help you achieve the impact you're seeking while empowering your team and
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stepping away from the hustle so you can focus on the things you love the most.
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Sound good? Let's get started.
0:33
Hello, my aid worker friend. I hope you're having a great week.
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I've been really enjoying the last week because I just had several groups of
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students join my coach approach course and they're from all over the world.
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I have some wonderful leaders from Syria and Afghanistan and Pakistan
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and East Africa and UK and Portugal.
1:01
And I've been partnering with the Aga Khan Foundation to help bring this coach
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approach leadership style to their teams.
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And it's so fun, so fun to see how well they respond and how excited they
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are to learn this new way of leading.
1:24
So that has been my week, but that's what keeps me going.
1:29
It's my students. I so enjoy working with them.
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So. I wanted to outline something for you because I feel like this is a very
1:39
interesting way of looking at the evolution of humanitarian and development
1:48
leadership over the last 40, 50 years, and also in terms of how we work with
1:59
communities and depending on where you are in this phase of leadership.
2:05
And sometimes it's necessary to be in a certain phase, just like
2:10
when we have an emergency, it's necessary to respond in a certain way.
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But sometimes I think that leaders don't always recognize how their particular
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leadership or way of leading is actually kind of, let's say old school or needs
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an update and upgrade because the way that they're leading now is actually
2:36
creating more work for them and possibly for you if you're listening to this.
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So let's get to it.
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Shall we? So, I think we've all experienced when we are out in a community doing a project
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evaluation and you see that the community has not exactly acted as you had planned.
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In other words, they're not following the project plan.
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They're not following the outline of what we thought would happen.
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For example, I've seen times where grain barrels were distributed and when we went
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back to see how they were being used, they were being used for water storage.
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Or maybe you distributed some seeds and the community, instead of planting
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them, actually traded them for some other food item or for flour or
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something else that they needed. Or maybe they actually sold something that has been donated, like hospital
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equipment and used the money to pay for school fees for their kids.
3:59
So, you know, whatever it is, we can't be mad at the community in these cases.
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It definitely can be frustrating, but it's really more our fault in
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this situation than it is theirs.
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And there's a clear reason why this happened.
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And that is because we did not do enough work up front to understand their real
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need, but also maybe we were restricted in some way from being able to do that work.
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For example, I know a lot of proposals, are very restrictive
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and how you can use funding.
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And so this also can lead to this kind of a situation.
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But I find it interesting that there's this whole evolution of humanitarian
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and development work, and I see it paralleling in some ways the development
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of, or the evolution of, leadership in the humanitarian and development space.
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And that's what I wanted to talk to you about today, because these stories that
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I'm telling you now, where we go out in the community and we see that, "Oh, this
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isn't happening the way it's supposed to" I think there's some recognition now that
5:15
we need to get the community more involved in the project proposals and so on.
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But we need more human centered design.
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We need this different way of engaging the community to have more effective
5:31
development and humanitarian work.
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And in the same way, we also need to engage our teams in a different way
5:40
if we want to empower them and so also create less work for ourselves.
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So let me just outline what I mean by this.
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In the beginning, and this happens still sometimes, but, I think definitely in
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the old days of humanitarian work, when there was a crisis, we gave a man a fish.
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You know, that saying, give him in a fish and he'll fish for a
6:11
day or he'll eat for a day, sorry.
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So in this phase, we were giving men fish or hopefully women as well.
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And we were just distributing whatever it was because there was no local
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market and they just needed the basics.
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They just needed food or just, to survive.
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And so we were just giving them those things.
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And this I parallel to when a, maybe a new leader comes to a team, or a
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leader has new team members who, have little experience, so they don't have
6:54
something to, draw from just like the community doesn't have a local market
7:00
-it's been destroyed in the natural disaster or whatever
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it is, the, the conflict...
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In the same way, our team maybe comes to us when they're new with
7:11
nothing to draw from no, no experience or, um, not knowing what to do.
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And so what we do, we also give a man a fish in the sense that
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we just tell them what to do. We give them information or instructions and then they go and do it.
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So this is the, the first stage of what I see a parallel between humanitarian
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and development work when we're at a very early stage of just giving,
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and the same with our leadership.
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When we first start leading a new team, then maybe they're
7:47
starting from not knowing. And so we just need to tell them what to do.
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--- Stranded vehicles? Oh no.
8:00
Donor visits?. Oh, man. And delayed procurements.
8:03
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8:07
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8:10
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8:24
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navigation bar at the top of the page.
8:32
Now back to today's episode.
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So the next stage of development, is to teach a man to fish, right?
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And so, in that case, when we're talking about working with the community,
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they're stable enough where they have time and the ability to learn a new
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and perhaps better way of planting or improving on what they are already doing.
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So we teach them some kind of agricultural technique or maybe
9:06
how to save their money in a certain way or whatever it is.
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And so this is the next phase where they're a little bit better off so
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that they have something to draw from.
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And this is the same in the next phase of leadership.
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So in this phase, we go from telling our teams what to do because they have
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no experience to teaching them how they can do something for themselves.
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So we teach them how to do a detailed plan or monitoring and evaluation or
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how to write a report or whatever it is.
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So in this stage of development and in leadership, it's a bit more
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sustainable in terms of getting someone to do things on their own, right?
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Just like that saying, teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime.
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However, now we're entering a new phase of development and humanitarian work.
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And this is where we are now and where I see the future is going.
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Where we empower a man to do his own thinking or to decide,
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does he even want to fish?
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Maybe he wants to do something else, or how does he make
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his fishing business grow? Or how does he create a business?
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So it's becoming more common now to empower communities to do things
10:29
themselves by giving them money and asking them, what do you want?
10:35
How do you want to develop yourselves?
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We believe you are capable and that you know better than we do.
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And in terms of leadership, this next phase, this, this phase now that we
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are entering and we have been entering is what I am calling the Modern
10:57
Humanitarian and Development Leader 2.
11:00
0. So in this phase, we empower our teams to do things their own way.
11:07
Just like we offer the community money and allow them to buy what they
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need or to do what they want with it. We allow our teams to take what they know and be able to implement or problem
11:22
solve and do the things where they take greater responsibility and feel confident
11:28
in their own ability to do something.
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This is where we come to how you may be adding to your own workload
11:40
according to the way you are leading.
11:42
So if you are in the first phase of leadership, the telling phase.
11:47
You might be in that phase if there's a new team and they really don't
11:51
have experience or they don't know what to do, then yes, you probably
11:55
need to tell them what to do. Or in certain situations like high risk or reputational risk, those kinds of things.
12:03
However, eventually we need to evolve to at least the second phase of teaching
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them how to do things for themselves.
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And that is also very good and more sustainable.
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Like we said, teach a man to fish, but now we are entering this third
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phase of the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leadership 2.
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0, which involves how do we empower our teams and really trust that they
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have enough experience to draw from where they know what to do, but we
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need to have a conversation with them where we can help them find out what
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are the obstacles, what are the blocks, and why they're not taking action?
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This is what I'm teaching in the Coach Approach because
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it's not something intuitive.
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These conversations on how to help others become more confident or aware
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of how they are doing things right now that might be keeping them stuck, that
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they know what they want to do, but we can help them uncover why they are not
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taking action, why they're not doing it.
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And this is the way of the Modern Humanitarian and Development
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leader. Not only in the way we engage our team, but also in the way we engage
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the community, the government and implementing partners so that they take
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ownership over what they are doing, that they take more responsibility.
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And that leads to them taking more of the workload from you.
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Because like I've seen with so many of my students, when they start using
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this style, they see the communities start to take ownership over what they
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want to do, or they see the government organizing their own meetings, they see
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their team starting to make decisions for themselves and be more proactive.
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And this in turn allows you to free up your time and changes your role
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as the leader to help make your team stronger and to make an impact
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through them rather than with them.
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So I want you to notice throughout your week, how often are you creating more work
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for yourself by the way you are leading?
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Are you creating dependency or are you having conversations
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that empower those around you? And where will this way of leading that you are currently doing now bring you in
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a year, two years or three years from now?
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Will you evolve to be the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader
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2.0 or will you stay in the old school way of giving a man a fish?
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The way we are doing development is evolving and our
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leadership style should too.
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But being aware of how you are leading now is that first step to change.
15:19
And then the next step is how do I now empower those around me to do their best
15:27
work so that we can broaden our impact?
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All right, that's it for this week.
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So great to talk to you again and see you next week.
15:38
Bye for now. Hey, if you are ready to step up your leadership game, I want to invite
15:44
you to join my coaching course for aid worker leaders, where you're
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going to learn how to master coaching skills in order to empower your team
15:53
to become more proactive, confident, and motivated at what they do, which
15:58
of course will help you achieve more impact for them and for you.
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Just head over to www.
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aidforaidworkers. com and click on the coaching course waiting list.
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So you'll be the first to know when doors open for the next enrollment.
16:15
Can't wait to see you there.
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