Sameville | Presented by Seth Bate

The WSU Center for Community Support and Research has been facilitating a leadership development process for two dozen staff members of Starkey, Inc. A foundational concept for CCSR’s approach to leadership development (and one shared with our partners at the Kansas Leadership Center) is that groups have to be in a productive zone of work for significant change to occur. Getting into that productive zone can be uncomfortable and risky.

Because they care deeply about the work they do, and because the challenges they face are daunting and complex, the Starkey participants have been doing the difficult work of learning how to exercise leadership. Some of them wrote this story to illustrate what it can be like when people exercise leadership to get themselves and others into that productive zone.

Sameville

Photo courtesy of Paul Stringer

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a happy little town named Sameville, Kansas, where nothing ever changed. Flowers were always in bloom, the sun was always shining and the birds were always chirping. Rain only came at night, and everyone always pretended to be happy. Door to door salesmen trying to sell new ideas were always turned away.

But one day, a mean, nasty ogre crawled out from under a bridge. He captured the queen and her lady in waiting. (Oh, my!) The mean, nasty ogre overturned all of their long-held, sacred beliefs, and uncovered their unpleasant truths. The weather turned hot and dry. The flowers died. Chirping birds spontaneously combusted! Everyone in Sameville grew hot, and sweaty and smelly and cranky. They were uncomfortable and afraid.

So the uncomfortable people of Sameville brought in fans to cool things down, but the fans just blew away the covers they had thrown over their unpleasant truths. They formed a committee and plotted to kill the mean, nasty ogre, but they could not agree on a plan, because no one was in charge, there was no agenda, and no one had the power to decide. The queen and her lady in waiting were not around to chase all their problems away!

But then, one day the earth started to shake. The people of Sameville were frightened, and large cracks opened up in the ground where their sacred structures once stood - as if to swallow them. But nothing fell in! Sameville was safe because of the changes the mean, nasty ogre had made. And all of the people realized that the mean, nasty ogre was a hero. His actions had saved their little town!

And so the little town celebrated, and they changed their name to Changeville. No one was ever completely happy. The birds didn’t always chirp, and the sun didn’t always shine. But the little town of Changeville was safe forever and ever.

The end.

In the leadership development process, participants have experienced many moments an “ogre” has shaken things up in order to move the group into a productive zone of work. Sometimes the CCSR facilitators have been the ogres by doing something unexpected, using silence or asking provocative questions. Other times the Starkey participants have been pretty ogre-ish by challenging an assumption or offering a tough interpretation. Ogres might be scary, but sometimes they are exercising leadership.

For more about the productive zone of work (sometimes called the productive zone of disequilibrium) we recommend The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Heifetz, Linsky & Grashow.