How we work
Helen is a well respected director in the third sector, having worked at senior levels for many years. She has developed ways of doing things that work, and is wary of new fangled ideas being introduced by "young things who are all theory."
She had been offered 1-1 Development along with four other directors as part of a wider organisational process. She felt sceptical about all aspects, as her area was working fine and she just wanted to get on.
It is only as the wider work took shape that Helen began to gain feedback about her behaviours and their impact on others. She was surprised and at times felt confused and angry. Whilst the sessions with her 1-1 Developer started with a high level of wariness, gradually Helen began to experience the benefits of this opportunity to reflect.
The sessions offered a safe place to work out how she made sense of the changes emerging around her and how to make progress in her own approach.
1-1 work with Oasis Developers supports and challenges individuals, in a safe and confidential environment, to bring more of themselves to the questions they are addressing. Executive Development is not about academic fascination, counselling or being intellectually interesting. It is an opportunity to find new ways of responding, gain confidence in a new role, step out of repeated and possibly self-defeating patterns of behaviour, enhance empowering leadership and develop a wider range of conscious choices in decision-making processes.
Our work always begins, then, with your questions - not from a prescribed starting point but from where you actually are, within your particular context. It may be that you do not yet have clarity about explicit questions, but rather a 'sense' of what you need to explore or pay attention to. This, then, is the starting point.
Sometimes, especially when Executive Development is part of a wider organisational process, you might not even be sure how you want to use the facility, or see immediately how it might be of worth. In these situations, 1-1 sessions might focus on discussing what you think might be helpful, gaining feedback and giving you time to explore possible areas for development.
A common framework
While the explicit content of 1-1 sessions is shaped by the questions and priorities of the individual, underlying the process is a rigorous, consistent framework from which all Oasis 1-1 Developers work. We call our framework The Oasis Seven Stage Cycle of Effective Relationship, a model which we have developed over the last 20 years and which has proven robust across organisations, sectors, countries and cultures.
In keeping with our peer learning approach, each 1-1 Executive Developer brings their 'whole self' to the work with clients - that is, using his or her self as the instrument of change. Each one draws on their unique life experience, business know-how, professional insights and personal presence to engage in creating a fruitful working relationship with the client. Therefore all Developers offer something quite distinct, whilst operating out of a shared philosophy embodied in Whole Person Learning and reflected in our 'Seven Stage' model.
In terms of the model in action, we see the first stage of 1-1 work as making contact with yourself and Oasis, with other stages then following. This process is not a simple matter of moving from one to the next, rather it is dynamic and moves backward and forward between stages as new realisations and options emerge.
By using this framework explicitly or implicitly in the 1-1 sessions, 1-1 Developers can help individuals understand where they are in the cycle, which in turn frees people to see their situations more objectively and with greater insight into the issues at play.
Oasis Seven Stage Cycle of Effective Relationship
For a deeper understanding of the framework see Forging the Future Together - Human Relations in the 21st Century, by Bryce Taylor, Oasis Press, 1989.
