21. Teams Learning Out Loud – A Power Conversation with Tyler Colbourne

Saralyn Hodgkin
Hi everyone, I’m Saralyn Hodgkin. And this is the podcast to practice your leadership.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. This is our first time having a power conversation with a guest – Tyler Colbourne is with us today – where we are exploring learning out loud, and a way that he’s turned that into a role in Inspiring Communities, which he is one person, not speaking for that organization, speaking for himself, because he’s got a lot to share. Tyler, introduce yourself.

Tyler Colbourne
I’m Tyler Colburne, Director of Learning and Organizational Development, Inspiring Communities. And I’ve had like five roles at this organization. And each one’s sort of been like an iteration of the previous one based on relationships and conversations I’ve had and leads for the organization. And I’m now in this iteration of it. The organization has grown really quickly.

And the only thing I’d say about myself that I try to bring into the conversation is like, I didn’t follow a typical career path. You know, I’ve done a bunch of different things. And suddenly, I’m almost 40, which feels ridiculous, but you know, I just graduated from university, first person in my family, just last year, now I’m in a master’s program, which feels bananas. And it’s such a strong part of who I am.

Saralyn Hodgkin
The reason why I was really excited to hop on with you and have this conversation is because you and inspiring communities and Louise and like the team has prioritized a role that puts the work of the team at the forefront as the work. Not creating a program or a widget. No, no, no, what you’re responsible for, is holding things like team learning, holding the team so that when you work on the team, the team can work on the work. And you were trying to figure out what what does this role look like. And that’s what was interesting to me. Because it’s not a normal role. And that’s not okay.

And it’s important here that, an organization that is, you know, Inspiring Communities doesn’t have millions of millions of dollars to throw anywhere. Like you have constraints that do what they’re supposed to do, they constrain you to make you as an organizational entity make wise choices, right? And here’s a wise choice of taking a senior leader in the organization that has a lot of different skills, and say, Hey, could you center in to focusing and curating a role that helps us focus on the team so that the team can go out and do its work?

And some of the things that you were playing with, right, just to prime us a bit, some of the things you were playing with is, okay, well, could this work sort of look at organizational dynamics, organizational development, team cohesion, culture, cohesion, inclusion and diversity, and equity, team learning, organization as a system, communications of internal learning, external communications to our board, KPIs strategy, like the list is long, I’m going to stop there, the list is long of what could this include? But what also really interested me was that you were very interested in what does it not include? What does this not include? Because there’s scope in here. So talk me through Tyler, why this role? What is this role? And why does it stay really important to the work that you’re trying to do here?

Tyler Colbourne
I think in other iterations of this organization, people have been trying to hold pieces of it all the time. But it’s never just been fully held with one person. Of course, it’s shared, it’s collaborative, it’s a, it needs to be, you know, a team approach, but there hasn’t been someone who’s holding that and initiating it and following up on it. So that’s like a very simple answer for why it’s important. Beyond that, I think it’s important in any organization, in any work. We’re shape shifting monsters, we’re always changing, you know, we’re always shedding our skin, we’re always changing our new ideas and having new concepts coming to us. And we’re integrating them all the time. And unless there’s someone who’s cultivating that, organizationally, one to one and teams or the whole organization, I think you just can fall back to the status quo, and uphold the norms of the status quo.

And you kind of have to, I believe in you know, you have to have someone challenging the status quo a little bit. Am I saying that’s me? No, I don’t think I’m challenging the status quo, greater of society, like in general, but I think in terms of our own ability to just sort of fall into patterns that uphold capitalism and colonialism, white supremacy, it’s just too easy. And I’m going to do that as well. Of course, you know, it’s just sort of inherent in who we are and how the world is structured around us right now. But if we don’t have that bit of pause, and someone who’s sort of tasked and accountable and empowered to, like, hold that collective individual pause for people. I mean, you just you’re guaranteed to uphold the status quo.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Someone who’s accountable to hold the pause of the team to reflect on and challenge the status quo and our patterns.

Tyler Colbourne
Do you just like have like, does text just get fed back to you like? Are you seeing a live transcription of this?

Saralyn Hodgkin
This is what you just said, right? Like this is what you’re saying. The power of this role is for someone, in this case it’s you, for someone who holds and sits in the seat of accountability to help the team pause, powerful pause, to check the status quo and the patterns so that ultimately the team can be aligned, walk the path that they’re consciously constructing, and kick the shit out of the world and make change because that’s why it exists. The team doesn’t exist because it’s fun. It exists for a purpose. And so someone needs to sit in the seat and hold the accountability for the team to pause, shine the light around all the little dark corners and check the status quo and patterns so that they can actually recalibrate. That’s a powerful purpose for a role that can help the team work on itself so we can work in the work.

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah, when I hear you say it back I’m like wow, this role is so important. I better do a good job.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Put all that pressure right back on yourself. That’s really helpful. No problem. Yeah, Louise team, you don’t need to do nothing. Don’t you worry about it. My name is Tyler I’ll hold it all the way.

Tyler Colbourne
That individualistic is so pervasive, it’s like, just threads right through. It’s like saying like, what am I talking to you for? I got to go back and get to work.

Saralyn Hodgkin
But and so the power of, of the operationalizing of your role is actually not from an ego place to define if you’re doing, not doing, whatever. But it’s to continually and constantly create the conditions, create the conditions, create the conditions, bring up and hold the discomfort, bring up and hold the conversation on conflict, but whatever it is, create the conditions. Okay, tell me about what the role is and what it is not.

Tyler Colbourne
I feel like that is still being defined. And it will probably be defined until the role ends. I think for what I understand to be true, like the core components of my job are defining processes within our organization. And that includes learning internally and externally holding our learning sessions, you know, curating and cultivating and building relationships with people who come into our organization and offer sessions. It’s also holding our, you know, organizational cohesion, you know, I facilitate and hold all the ICN sessions. And I have been doing that for a while. But it’s more obviously a part of my role now.

I’ve also been hoping to step into a bit more coaching with our staff around processes. So like, not just like creating something, but being available to people to talk them through in thought partnership, and work on things together. And I also see myself as being the person who holds maybe some of the conflict in our organization, and maybe some promising practices are how we can engage in courageous conversations. I was doing a lot of that before as well. But it’s more obviously a part of my role now. Does that make sense?

Saralyn Hodgkin
Yeah, so then what’s out?

Tyler Colbourne
What’s out? Gosh.

Saralyn Hodgkin
What’s your no list?

Tyler Colbourne
Well, I’ve gone from managing, you know, and supervising a bunch of people to doing, not supervising anyone. That’s on my no list. Like, I’m not anyone’s direct supervisor, which is really interesting. For me for the last little while, I’ve been directly working with people. My no list, I very clearly do not want to do any HR administration. If I can, of course, you know I think with nonprofit, there’s always an element of like, sometimes it is all hands on deck and you have to like sort of shift as the needs arise.

But that’s, that’s definitely a no for me, I don’t want to step into that very much. I think because I have such an eclectic background, I’m capable of doing all kinds of little things. And it’s been helpful to think a lot about what you know, I can do those things, but do I want to and should I? So I think the admin part, leading in the admin, it’s outside of my role, more so than it used to be. Budget management, you know, and forecasting, and holding on to those pieces. I only did that in collaboration before, but I don’t do that nearly as much at all when I’m not being asked to or required to. I think I work collaboratively on those things, but I don’t hold accountability for them.

Saralyn Hodgkin
The reason why I asked you this is to really delineate that you’re not a managing director. You’re not an operations director, manager, you’re not an HR administrator, which sometimes these rules get convoluted with all that stuff. Because it’s off the side of the desk.

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah. And we have, we have a really amazing Managing Director Kristen, who’s a friend of mine, but also like just a really great co worker, and she’s shaped this organization, so many wonderful ways and even for her and I, because her role is relatively new, and she just returned back from parental leave, and I’m not speaking for her, but my role and her role are so connected. And we have different responsibilities.

But her and I’ve been able to have this relationship that allows us to go: Can you do this? Can I do this? Which has been very helpful, because this is a new role. My role is not directly funded by any particular organization or funder, and neither is hers techincally. So there’s a lot of need in the organization, there’s a lot of need in every organization, there’s always a goalpost that you can work towards. But I’m very lucky to have to work with her and the leadership team to sort of co-define what our requirements are based on where we sit.

Saralyn Hodgkin
And this is part of the point, right, is that your role needs to be integrated throughout because it is so, it is a weaver, cross pollinating, learningful centre, that you need to figure that stuff out that weaving, I suspect, hey?

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah, and what I really want our organization to do more boldly and bravely is to learn out loud, you know, and…

Saralyn Hodgkin
What does that mean?

Tyler Colbourne
I think I’m getting it from you honestly, just hosting artifacts that highlight what we’ve learned. Doesn’t mean it has to be the ultimate truth, or the correct thing. It just means based on what we know now and the relationships we have, and the work that you’ve done, this is where we’re at. And that can change in six months. I think there’s this fear of putting things on the internet, because it’s like, well, now we’re saying this is the line in the sand. And that we’re always going to measure up to this point. And I’m hoping this organization, we can be a bit more bold in saying, like, God, things are scrappy, and weird and complex. And we’re figuring things out. And we’re imperfect. But we sure are trying, and we’re holding relationships at the center.

And that’s a lot of what my role is hoping to be. And an example of that is early on, you know, this is the first time as a colonial Canadian project, you know that we’ve embraced Truth and Reconciliation as a day and as a week. And so we had our first national Truth and Reconciliation Day. And so I put together a list of resources in a learning survey for the whole entire organization and was really like, everyone has to do this, you know, you don’t have to use these resources. But like, let’s spend the day, it’s a day off, like it’s not a holiday, let’s spend a day on reflecting about what it means for us individually, collectively. And what we can do to shift our organization.

I’m pretty happy that we had 17 respondents out of like 23 staff, which is really good for our organization, and lots of really amazing learnings. And so I spent my morning summarizing them and putting the report back to all the staff. And that’s something I want to do way more often, after our learning sessions, after we, you know, share resources after any, anything that allows us to stop and pause and go is, is our current way of working the way that we should be working? I wanted to like, collate it, summarize it, and give it back to the people who created it.

Saralyn Hodgkin
And there’s the power, right? Hold on a minute, let’s look at how we’re working together. Is this what we’re really intending? Are we walking the talk in the way that we’re holding some of our programming and some of our ethos out there in the world? Let’s have a role whose job it is to insert some of this work that’s important, reflected back, and say, where’s the gap? Where’s our brave space? Where’s our practice? Now? What do you need to do in your own self leadership? When you see all of this coming back? There’s the power. Talk to me about the power of the role that you anticipate.

Tyler Colbourne
Oh, gosh, I don’t even know where to approach that question. Because I think it depends on the day and the relationships. And I think as an organization, we talk a lot about being relational. But I think we fall into that same sort of neoliberal trap that every nonprofit organization can fall into, and focusing on the outputs, and not seeing the relationships as being like a key contributor to the outputs in the outcome. And so I feel a lot of power in relationships. As an organization with a new leadership team and new roles, I think there’s a bit of a, we have to get over or move through this sort of murkiness of like, where my power is, where other people’s power is, or in, and what can they have control over and, and when do we have to work collaboratively and we’re figuring that out right now.

And it’s probably gonna take couple more months before we get to a sweet spot. And then I’m sure we’ll have that sweet spot for a little bit until we have to figure out there’s a new sweet spot. But I think where my personal power in this role is holding on to the relationships, and recognizing that we can get into the scrappy and the courageous conversations and still respect each other, you know, that there’s room for resistance in these conversations, you know, there’s room for us to be angry and spicy and, and loving and all that mixed up on one.

I think that’s, you know, I’ve done a lot of work in this area. And so I feel like I have that skill and not that others don’t, I just think I’m just best situated to do it right now. And so I’m hoping that I can hold on to more of that and step into the messiness and sort of disrupt colonialism and white supremacy in our work as often as we can, while also recognizing that we’re in a nonprofit, you know, and that’s just sort of baked into who we are as an institution. And so I think as an organization that strives to be more equitable, we have to actively be like bringing power and equity into the conversation as often as possible.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Which is super uncomfortable, has a whole bunch of power dynamics. People run from the scent of conflict, oh my gosh, right? And requires us to change language from things like nonprofit to for impact, things along those lines. So talk to me about your role connected to holding conflict, holding power.

Tyler Colbourne
Hmm. I care deeply about equity and inclusion and justice and transformative justice especially. And I think even before I was in this role, it’s something I held a lot. When I started working for the core team two years ago, one of our first conversations was about power that facilitated with the team that I just started working with. And, and so I often had to rise above a little bit to my own, you know, assumptions about where I was, and who had power over me to bring into that conversation. And now I’ve been empowered to hold that conversation. Rather than having to work above and beyond the position I was in least that’s how I view it.

I think there’s still a relational power dynamics that will be in every organization and every team that have to be navigated with thought, and sensitivity, and boldness, but I’m a bit more empowered to do it now. Because it’s part of my role, conflict. We don’t have a lot of like, obvious conflict in our organization that I’ve been a part of, but I think it’s less about like holding the container for conflict, and just maybe supporting people in recognizing that conflict is actually just a part of our life, like lives. It’s just, it’s pervasive, it’s always going to be there. And that it’s not a bad thing always, that it’s something that can bring us to a new state of clarity, and new opportunity of building relationships, you know, so I know that answers your question directly. But I’m hopeful that people can come to me if there’s conflict, or I can actually just support people in building their capacity to engage in conflict.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Well, let me let me insert this to see if it resonates at all. Part of the power of the role that you’re crafting and curating here is to normalize conflict in the behaviors that are required to be able to hold conflict, as a place of data, as a place of conversation, as a place of shining the light on certain blind spots, as a place for the team to gain intelligence, versus to run from, hide, oppress, surpress. But being able to use this role in a way to say, hey, conflict, need to see more of it. Hey, conflict, what are we learning here? Hey, conflict, so forth, right? Being able to use it in a way that is different than most people see conflict.

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah. And I hope if anyone’s listening to this, they don’t go, Oh, he thinks he’s an expert in conflict, I’m not. What I hope I cannot be an expert in, but hold on to and like, I don’t know scream from the rooftops is humility. I would love to just say that we’re all just scrap, well, I’ll backup for a second. A thing that I say to my friends all the time is that we’re just big walking bags of meat trying to get by. And so if we can just all agree to that, if we can lower our expectations of us as individuals to this point, can we engage in a different kind of conversation that allows us to go that we’re all just sort of messy, let’s just start from there.

And so I think, what I really hope my role in this organization is that we can not develop our capacity for conflict without developing our engagement and humility. Because I think in nonprofit and for impact, like he said, so much of our work is tied to our identity and our personal beliefs and values about what can be a more just and harmonious world. And my experience of the last 20 years is that most of the conflict in organizations and nonprofit for impact is centered in that people believe in their way and what they’ve been experiencing, or what they’ve experienced, or what they’ve been connected to, is the better way. And I’m hoping that we can all just agree that we all have our own context and our experiences. And the better way is the one that we create together.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Well, and here it is, right, a concentric circle view, if the inner circle is that self leadership practice, what I hear you saying is people need to learn into generous assumptions, communication prompts that are held with humility, is the word that you’ve used, right? Having different language, different lenses on accountability, and how you engage in those conversations, and then come out to that, you know, the next layer of that concentric circle around the team, and holding the conversations that help the team take the weight of this conflict of whatever, whatever messiness, I think, is the way you call it for the team to hold that weight rather than me as an individual, constantly burning myself out, constantly putting in that emotional labor, and so on, making myself small, and so on. Saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, let’s all start from this place. And then the team can better hold some of those costs, and those burdens, and that weight rather than already always being in this very alone, individual cost place. Yeah. Does any of that resonate with you?

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah, absolutely. I often think about the the tension between empowerment and accountability. And when we have like a systems lens on it, you know, I think we can hold people accountable. But what ways are we failing them if we’re not empowering them to be accountable? And like, what are the conditions that need to be around them, to support them to be accountable, and I think my role will hopefully cultivate right conditions for people to be their most empowered, accountable selves.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Cultivate the right conditions.

Tyler Colbourne
That’s my biggest hope, I’d say. Are you familiar with the term reflexive?

Saralyn Hodgkin
Yes, talk to me about it.

Tyler Colbourne
Well just from a social work lens, I just love that like it’s, it’s not so much the inward sort of navel gazing and it’s just holding on to reflection, it’s like integrating and applying that this new knowledge that you’ve, you know, produced based on stuff that’s come to you and integrating and applying it to your work. And I just think that’s such an important piece and especially when it comes to equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization, I think, over the last few years, we’ve seen such an upswell of people, being experts on, I should be doing air quotes around that, experts, and you know, equity, diversity, inclusion, from that capacity building lens.

And what is I think really required for us to move as society is that that integration that you have to do every single day and work uphill every single day at it, you know, so much of this work attests to our identities and our personal values. I think so many, you know, helpers, and, and people who are in this field for you know, for impact are so moved to change the world that they’ve, I guess they can kind of get stuck on a particular model or framework.

And I think we, our organization, has so many wonderful, skillful, knowledgeable, passionate people who come from this work from their own experiences, and I really see it as my job to sort of unpack some of those mental models and uncover the assumptions that are underneath us and, and move from should to could. No individual shoulds to like, it should be this way. It should be this way. Well, my experience, it should be this, to we could do this, you know, as an organization, and we could do something different now. It’s not easy.

It’s not easy. And that layer of should, right? You’re shoulding all over yourself. Nobody needs that. Give me a break.

Yeah. Yeah.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Talk to me, there’s something that you said in an email to me around some of your own work, as you’re holding this role, you’ve got to be doing, Tyler has to be doing Tyler work, right? And one of the things that you said is, and I’m gonna quote you on this, this is no air quote, this is a Tyler quote. That doubt needs to take a backseat to humility, doubt needs to take a backseat to humility. Talk me through that one?

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah, well, I think, you know, I’m a complex intersectional person, you know, I’m a person of privilege. But I’m also you know, a queer person with a disability, and my worldview, and my experience of the world has been constructed by dominant forces around me. And so I think it’s really easy for myself and many other people to think that they don’t have the skill or the knowledge, you know, and to really rest there. Because I think we’re just constantly bombarded with messages about how we’re not good enough, you know, we’re not, we’re not the right person, we don’t have the right body, we don’t have, there’s just so many examples in media and the world around us.

And what I love about the social work perspective is like, is the idea of not knowing. And so instead of doubting myself, and assuming that I don’t have the capacity to do something, holding on to humility, and that none of us are perfect, none of us have all the answers and that, you know, through the relationships and, and the system that we’re in, we can find another answer, maybe not the right one, maybe not the best one, but another one. So focusing less on expertise from that sort of traditional Eurocentric view of expertise to, to, I guess, embodied knowledge, and, and allow us to figure it out together.

Saralyn Hodgkin
Together. There’s the underscored word right there. Hey, and in order to do that, together, there’s forms of humility that are required. There’s forms of your own work that are needed. There’s sitting and dwelling in the discomforts that come from that there’s conflict that arises that we need to engage in, not run away from all of that, from what you’ve all said, right? In the course of our conversation. Like that’s where it all comes and sits altogether is doing your own work so that we can do the work together. Are there two or three frameworks or practices that are just really working for you?

Tyler Colbourne
This might seem really simple, but like, we’re an organization that’s not fully remote, but we’re moving towards more remote with projects within their own play space location, but something that I really am sticky on is having shared notes. Well, that seems really simple. But you know, having a thoughtful agenda where there’s like connections before content, you know, having some discussion and then just following up by email to say, this is what we discussed. What do you think, and I think our organization moves so fast all the time, that people aren’t taking that time to send that email or have a shared document that goes this is what we talked about last time, where are we at.

And I think that can quickly turn into colonial approaches and like, make sure we have meeting minutes. And it’s very prescriptive, and I don’t want to uphold that. But there is, you know, as someone has experienced, like neuro divergence and, and challenges with, you know, processing, it’s really important for me to have some sort of like documentation of what we talked about and, and the process of following up on that. And that’s also not just like, here are the action items. But you know, six of us are on this call. And we’ve all sort of talked about how we’re burnt out in our check in. That’s important information to me. And let’s name it, you know, I’m gonna summarize that right now in this room, six of us has said this, what does that mean for this conversation that we’re about to have.

I’ve really drawn to Liberating Structures. Love open space technology, I just think that could be used in any meeting, and you’ll probably get to where you need to go. That’s also on liberating structures. I’m really drawn to Decolonial Futures, or Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures and their work of Towards Braiding. And I always have these cards with me, the With/Out Modernity cards from Decolonial Futures, highly recommend people check them out. And like the card that’s here at the top of the deck right now, it’s a hard ish question, says what problems do your solutions reproduce or generate?

To me it’s such a simple question, but I think it’s really easy to just assume that our, our solution solves problems without considering what problems that might create. So I love that as sort of like a generative inquiry, you know, some of these questions are really helpful for moving discussions along and then some people hate them. And there’s room for both. I think the other just like piece that I tried to bring into the work as much as I can is, is just laughter and fun. Like, you know, I’ve taught improv, I’ve done improv for a really long time. And I think there’s so many lessons to improv that can be brought into our work, you know, the approach of yes and, you know, it’s a, it’s not just like, but, it’s no, you say yes to what’s said before you and you build off of it. Yeah, I think that’s something I carry with me as much as I can, for a sense of whimsy and fun.

Saralyn Hodgkin
So I’m going to, I’m going to tell you what I just heard. One way of hearing what you just said, three things are working for you. Three framing practices, tools, whatever you want to call them, three things are working for you. One is paradox. Yeah, there’s room for both, room for both. And to create the space and the norm that there’s room for both. Number one, number two, joy is working for you. And you can operationalize that by actually having space for laughter, using prompts like yes and, but joy, crazy, working for you, love it.

And then coming back to the top of what you just said, you know, you raise the question, this is important to me. So to me, the tool I hear in that is asking people, what’s important process to you? What’s important to you here? What’s important information to you, so that you can show up and thrive? What’s important? Like just that question, at any given time, at any given scale. Isn’t that telling about what we’re trying to do here together?

When you emailed me and said hey, or when I emailed you and said, hey, saw you have a new gig, want to talk? And then we chatted about it, the reason is because I can see the power of this role. I’ve tried to construct, I’ve tried to live into the power of this role. I’ve tried to have this role funded, and so on, in all my other iterations and previous lives, right? And careers. And you’re doing it. And I think that this is one of the leavers in terms of teams, and teams structures, and organizational entities, organizational dynamics, having this role is a lever that can enable significant change in how teams operate towards abundance, towards holding each other in relationship.

This role has the power to help enable the conditions, the culture, the relational aspect of our team, so that we can rise fiercely as a team to foster, enable the change out in the world that, that is our purpose. That is our rally cry. Too often, teams focus on the widgets, the KPIs, the production, productivity, programming, and all of that is important. There’s a place for a lot of that. But what about this powerful place that you’re talking about? There’s a difference here. And it is a significant lever in the system for change in the for impact sector. This is a lever and you’re sitting in it, and not a lot of organizations make this decision. They don’t put their attention or their funding to this role.

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah. And I completely understand why based on the constraints and the scarcity mindset of so many organizations, but yeah, I agree it’s, I think it’s, it’s required. I think there needs to be someone to be cultivating the conditions

Saralyn Hodgkin
Say it again, it’s what?

Tyler Colbourne
It’s required.

Saralyn Hodgkin
It’s required.

Tyler Colbourne
Yeah.

Saralyn Hodgkin
It’s required.

Thanks all, I’m Saralyn. You can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership.