Leap Further - Partner profile

An interview with facilitator extraordinaire Kev Wyke

Leap Further workshop 1There are many things that Kevin Wyke enjoys about his work. There’s the people stuff: building communities, helping groups of people to work better together, enabling people to think differently… “I absolutely love working with people, seeing them thrive and flourish, seeing them challenging themselves and doing things differently and then leaving sessions with a big smile on their faces,” says Wyke, founder and director of Leap Further, a people and organisation development company. Then there’s the tech side to his job. “I engage people to use social media and online tools to support their learning. I’m a bit of a geek at heart.”

And so Wyke’s business is perfect for him as he gets to marry the people stuff with the tech. In particular, Wyke uses technology that reflects the way that he likes to engage with people. “Some of the principles that underpin what I do are to do with participatory leadership and democracy. I use techniques like Open Space, World Café and Street Wisdom.” With Open Space for example, Wyke facilitates sessions where the agenda is only set once the people involved are all together and then they are the ones that set the agenda, not him. “The group owns and leads that work. It is facilitation in its truest sense, rather than leadership or chairing.”

Leap Further workshop 2Wyke’s company has been going for almost five years now and he is a specialist in facilitation, coaching and leadership development. He works primarily with public sector organisations, drawing on his NHS roots (he previously worked in organisational development in the NHS and had a clinical role before that). Currently, a lot of his work is about bringing people in different organisations and different disciplines together to work more effectively and cohesively. Integration is a big word and a big challenge here. “Say front line teams of nurses and social workers,” says Wyke. “There’s lots of commonality, shared values and passions but they have different languages and cultures. They have very different decision making processes and points of accountability. It is fascinating the stuff that divides them as well as unites them.”

Leap Further workshop 3To help these groups integrate and work more effectively together, Wyke needs to create a safe space where they can learn to understand each other and work together. They need to be able to challenge each other, have deep and honest conversations and bring their strengths to the good of the whole. 

Wyke thinks that much of how people develop at work is driven by how they connect with each other and the communities they build. However, he thinks organisations don’t pay nearly enough attention to building communities in the workplace. “Organisations always want to know what the learning outcomes are but we don’t need every workshop or training event to impart tons of knowledge. One of my biggest challenges is about how to help organisations to understand that building communities and having dialogue is actually working, not a luxury.”

Wyke thinks there is way too much focus on knowledge acquisition in learning sessions. In fact, he thinks learners often already have the required knowledge, but just need to be helped to think and behave differently. “You don’t always need to put extra stuff in their heads. Instead, you might need to get out what is in there and get it shared. I have to get groups to think differently.”

There are specific tools that are all about creating interesting spaces for exploration and dialogue. Wyke likes to keep abreast of what’s new, what’s exciting and what is emerging that will help him to innovate his practice. He does this through his personal learning networks, networks that span different sectors and countries. “It allows me to access stuff at the cutting edge of facilitation and leadership development. Social media allows me to connect with people across the world – talking to people who have run Open Spaces events in Australia, for example.” These networks have enabled Wyke to really challenge his own thinking and practice. He loves this ability to experiment and try new ways of working. “I have a science background, so have that experimental way of working. If I have a theory I like to try it out. I really enjoy newness – skiing on virgin snow and experimenting with things.”

Leap Further workshop 4It’s been about a year since Wyke came across Noddlepod and decided it was the tool he needed to create a safe, effective place for community and peer learning. Wyke thinks it is a really good, defined space where people feel able to be honest and vulnerable. Plus, Wyke and Noddlepod share that strong theme: community building. “I am using it to support the building of learning communities, particularly in some of the larger leadership development programmes I am part of. With it you can build a really strong peer learning community that lasts longer than the face to face part of the programme.”

Something else that Wyke loves – being a tech geek at heart – is the way he gets to work closely with the developers to inform how the platform develops. “Normally you are miles away from the developers and it’s hard to change stuff.”

So for Wyke he gets to combine those two things: people stuff and tech. Perfect.

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Images from LnDConnect unconference 2016. Thanks to Martin Couzins and Julie Drybrough.

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