Emerging change: when the group agrees without me
I set the frame, I leave the room, the team agrees: a simple method for leadership teams to cooperate instead of competing.
Context
According to the studies gathered by consulting engineer René Rupert, 65 to 80% of company projects fail, despite twenty years of new tools: we try to change behaviour, not mindset. In meetings as in training, the constant presence of authority also puts people in competition for its recognition. Cooperation suffers and the group's knowledge goes unused.
Intervention
I experienced Madeleine Laugeri's emerging change in 2009, during an organisational development course. Since then, I have applied her Three Contracts: I present the purpose and the frame, then I leave. The group agrees on how it will cooperate and comes back with a common proposal, which I welcome or we adjust together. From a 35-minute workshop to a conference, the approach stays the same. With René Rupert's management compass, I also map the gap between the autonomy people feel, the autonomy they want and the autonomy their work requires.
Ethics and safety
In 2011, during my first attempt, one person felt unwell and considered that the exercise belonged to the therapeutic domain. I have kept a rule from it: announce the experiential nature of each format, so that everyone can protect themselves, and provide a referral when an experience touches on identity.
Observed effects
- At Nescafé, Curt Blattner applied the Three Contracts with 250, then 500 people; he estimates that his unit's results were multiplied by three
- Eight of eleven online workshops led to common proposals, with 5 to 32 people
- Three instructive failures: too little shared time, too few people, a co-facilitation without prior agreement
- An autonomy mapping at Fujitsu, then with 84 teachers at the Lausanne Hospitality School (EHL)
- Co-author of “Les clés du dialogue hiérarchique” (InterEditions, 2024); an article in press on this pedagogy
What it shows
A group often has all the resources it needs to take care of itself. The role of authority is to set the frame, then to trust: cooperation comes before individual performance, and everyone finds their rightful place.