Conversational Leadership

Module One: What’s In A Word?

This Module Will Cover:

 What is Controversial Leadership?

W H A T I S CO N V E R S A T I O N A L L E A D E R S H I P ?

When we used to teach management styles, it was about having a leader at the top of a pyramid, whose
wishes were carried out by people on lower areas of the pyramid. Most of this carrying out was
directive, meaning the leader told people what to do with the expectation it would be carried out. If
employees didn’t do as directed, the consequences were negative and could include a variety of punitive
actions, such as getting fired, not receiving promotions, or being denied training opportunities.

Today, that organizational model struggles to survive. Company leaders have recognized that the old-
style command and control methods don’t work anymore. We now understand what it actually takes to
engage people, and we know the people carrying out the work are intelligent, innovative, and valuable.

We’re operating in environments where people don’t deliver a simply manufactured item that can be
counted on a spreadsheet. Today’s employees have the ability to drive success (or failure) through the
culture of the organization by their attitude and through their own leadership qualities.

Conversational leadership is part of this shift. The culture of people having conversations is a leadership
strategy that encourages trust and closes working relationships. It uses conversation as a way for
everyone within the organization to communicate.
 Module Two: Fundamental Elements

This Module Will Cover:

 Designing Meaningful Conversations
 Building Your Personal Skills

DESIGNING MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS

Conversation between two people seems to be the easiest way to share information, but good
conversations take a little more effort than you might be accustomed to in order to get results.

Meaningful conversation involves deeply reflective listening, suspending assumptions, and building
shared meaning through an exchange, as opposed to an argument. Meaningful conversation also
involves speaking when you feel moved to participate, rather than being required to speak as part of a
social norm or an expectation.

Conversation does not include discussion, debate, persuasion, convincing, or tactics to try to change
someone’s opinion.

In organizations today, we often refer to terms like key messages and wordsmithing. We often
communicate through PowerPoint presentations, e-mail, and text messaging. However, a conversation
brings us back to the practice of sharing, thinking, and creativity by communicating stories and
connecting ideas together.

If you’ve heard of dialogue tools like these, they exist to help people to communicate better:
 Meeting audits
 Facilitated conference calls
 Storytelling for corporate leaders
 Accountability agreements
 Interest-based negotiations
When we create opportunities for particular kinds of communication to take place, we have an
opportunity to design conversations that lead to shared meaning, deeply respectful dialogue, and
effective listening.

B U I L D I N G Y O U R P ER S O N A L S K I L L S

What we say isn’t always what the other person hears. Our message goes through a complicated system
of filters and outside influences before it reaches the recipient. We must always clarify that the person
has received the message that we intended to send.
Tips for Becoming a Better Listener

Since listening is such an important part of a conversation, let’s review some tips for being a better
listener.
 Make a decision to listen. Close your mind to clutter and noise and look at the person speaking
with you. Give them your undivided attention.
 Don’t interrupt people. Make it a habit to let them finish what they are saying. Respect that
they have thoughts they are processing and speaking about, and wait to ask questions or make
comments until they have finished.
 Keep your eyes focused on the speaker and your ears tuned to their voice. Don’t let your eyes
wander around the room, just in case your attention does too.
 Carry a notebook or start a conversation file on your computer. Write down all the discussions
that you have in a day. Capture the subject, who spoke more (were you listening or doing a lot
of the talking?), what you learned in the discussion, as well as the who, what, when, where,
why, and how aspects of it. Once you have conducted this exercise 8-10 times, you will be able
to see what level your listening skills are currently at.
 Ask a few questions throughout the conversation. When you ask, people will know that you are
listening to them and that you are interested in what they have to say. Your ability to summarize
and paraphrase will also demonstrate that you heard them.
 When you demonstrate good listening skills, they tend to be infectious. If you want people to
communicate well, you have to set a high example.
 Module Three: The Four-I Model of Organizational Conversation

This Module Will Cover:

 Intimacy
 Interactivity
 Inclusion
 Intentionally
 Common Language

INTIMACY

Digging Deeper

As simple as it seems on the surface – a conversation being two or more people chatting – there can be
plenty more going on in reality. Conversation isn’t always easy, and for a leader in creating closeness
with staff, they’ve got to be trusted, approachable, and likeable.

Distance can exist between people trying to communicate no matter whether they are in the same
room, talking over the phone, or texting. However, those gaps can be bridged when people purposely
make an effort and create something that gives way to emotional closeness, or proximity. This proximity
lends itself to conversational intimacy, which, in the organizational sense, is gaining recognition as a
function of leadership.

Conversational intimacy flourishes when leaders sense that the gap between themselves and employees
is shrinking. The most profound institutional and psychological gaps exist in many companies. They
come from the idea that people are placed into roles, and this or that needs to be done. This is when
“That’s not my job” flourishes as a reply.
If you think about how a small company can represent an ideal of communication excellence, it is often
attributed to the conversational style that people operate in. In the old-school business model, success
came from becoming a bigger company where employees responded to orders and created more and
more products so they could gain a wider share of the market. Today’s small company, however, can
quickly mobilize resources and target new markets by leveraging their size. It is pretty straightforward
for them to leverage conversational intimacy as a way to communicate and move things along.

The Four Features

Small companies are adept at using four features to accelerate their results: scale, structure,
participation, and focus. Those same four features are what define a conversation in that setting. By
applying these four features through conversation, large companies can move as quickly as smaller
ones.

Scale relates to the number of people in a conversation, which typically involves just a few people at a
time.

Structure incorporates the proximity of people being close together physically (even if it’s virtual) and an
inviting atmosphere where people are open to sharing key insights and data.

Participation in a small company means that fewer formal dividing lines exist, and a wide range of
employees can be involved in the same projects.

Focus refers to all employees being aware of and staying committed to the priorities that have been
defined.

The authors of Talk, Inc. How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power Their Organizations, agree that
“Through conversation, a big or growing organization can retain or recapture much of the nimbleness,
the cohesiveness, and the raw, productive energy of a small well-oiled company.”
Replacing Corporate Communication

When corporate communication departments have traditionally passed communication information

from the head office or corporate leadership out to employees, it created something of a vehicle that
made conversation almost unnecessary. Directives, decisions, vision statements, and information about
flu shot clinics could all be disseminated through corporate communications.

However, organizational conversation creates a shift at a fundamental level through the Four I’s:
 Intimacy
 Interactivity
 Inclusion
 Intentionality

You’ve just been introduced to intimacy. Next, we’ll look at the other elements and how together they
contribute to a method of communication that has a high-performance result.
INTERACTIVITY

Building on Intimacy

A real conversation has to have at least two people involved. If someone monopolizes the conversation,
it’s no longer a conversation. This is the case whether we are in person-to-person conversation or using
technology. When a company uses media to take care of large scale communication, then they are often
relying on one-way transmission of messages that involve just a single voice.

When a company is spread out geographically, and there is a diversity of language, time zones, and
different cultures to consider, the temptation to broadcast gets enormous. Consider the potential for
interactivity in your communication instead.

Building on intimacy, where your efforts to get closer to employees, to listen, and to display and earn
trust are founded, is an essential element of interactivity.

A commitment to interactivity provides the place for employees to speak up and to enter the
conversation. The term inter comes for the Latin word for “between” and emphasizes that conversation
exists as an exchange and a back-and-forth process through which we communicate.

Evolving Communication Techniques

While you might think the concept is so simple that it hardly bears thinking about (and indeed, the
concept is simple), the truth is that a lot of us think we are in conversation when in reality we are either
broadcasting or not listening. Indeed, many corporations (because of their sheer size and logistics) have
difficulty getting used to the idea of interaction. Their traditional use of media for internal and external
communication has not lent itself to interactivity. If you think of internal devices such as e-mail, memos,
reports, and videos (even when they specifically request feedback), they are all pretty consistent about
being one-way vehicles. External communications like annual reports; print newsletters; magazine
articles; brochures; and television, radio, or podcast programs all tend to broadcast in one direction.
Today we are working in environments that disrupt the tradition of broadcast messaging. Social media
lends itself to be highly interactive and provides spaces for an instant, passionate, and almost constant
conversation. We have all kinds of opportunity for conversation, and the employee suggestion box has
given way to internal wikis and blogs that allow for input from all levels of the organization. This includes
the use of video blogging, video conferencing, and leveraging different types of online communities.

In the past, communications specialists were heavily involved in speech writing for CEOs and politicians.
Now, many CEOs and politicians post on social media on their own. Their communications team will
keep them up to date on how to use social media, and perhaps even manage their accounts, but the
CEO or politician creates their own messages. This emphasizes how things get even trickier to manage
when the CEO or politician has released a message over Twitter or Instagram that goes viral and garners
hundreds or even tens of thousands of responses. These events remind us how fluid this communication
is, as opposed to where it was closed, directive, and of singular direction in the past.
INCLUSION

What It’s All About

Inclusion lets employees have control of the information (content) that is being generated. Since
organizational conversation is all about contributions to two-way conversations, a natural step includes
having employees involved in creating those communications. This does require that the executive and
communication departments relinquish some control of what’s being communicated, but the benefits
are tremendous.

When employees are involved in what was formerly a corporate communications role, the mood of
those communications becomes more personal. It also helps raise the morale and engagement of
employees who get to be much more involved in what’s going on in their workplace.

Inclusion builds on what is being created in intimacy and interactivity, which were discussed earlier.
Inclusion is an example of full participation from within the workplace, even when those
communications are kept internal.

A company can get much better information when they equip employees with tools and resources about
what they could say to one another. Instead of focusing the employee messages on outside audiences,
the messages are mostly internal. When the executive sees a message they want to share publicly, they
will do so.

Looking at Inclusive Communications

One excellent example of inclusion is posting on intranet forums, blogs, and/or a Facebook page that is
only open to company employees. This is a shift from where corporate communication professionals
used to create all the messaging through which the company told its story to be internal and external
audiences. In the old system, communication was a highly controlled medium for distributing official
company messages. Employees who received those messages became part of the passive audience,
pretty much like members of the public.
Now, we see organizations let go of some of that control as they provide portals and space for more
collaborative messaging. This is a variation on what we refer to as user-generated content (where
people post blogs or on social media for public consumption) and is what we’ll refer to as employee-
generated content instead.

One great example of inclusive employee-generated content includes internal blogs (written and/or
video) that are created by employees outside of the communications role. These are employees who
have a strong interest in writing and become the equivalent of citizen journalists for the company. They
can take pictures of company events with their phones or cameras, create blog posts about products
being used, report on company events, share ideas about innovation, and much more. If the company
wants to make those messages external, then those can be shared (and polished if needed) by the
corporate communications team.

Example

Not that long ago, AT&T sponsored a group of employees who were also working moms to create a
“mommy blog” all about the issues that being a working mom entails. In addition to being a great
internal resource, the moms were also using lots of AT&T products and blogging about how they used
technology to balance work and home. This created valuable content for external audiences too.

When GE sponsored the Beijing Olympics, they created a portal for employees to see what kind of
technology was being developed for the games. They also encouraged employees to enter a design for
an Olympic-themed kite for a contest. The winner of the design contest attended events in Beijing and
blogged about her experience.

In another example, when GE employees submit photos for contests, GE also shares some of those
publicly in their annual reports and on their websites.
INTENTIONALITY

Defining Intentionality

You’ve probably heard about being intentional when you meditate, study, eat or work out. Now you’re
about to learn about intentionality in conversational leadership.

Conversational intentionality is about knowing ahead of time how you are going to hold a conversation
and what your endpoint is.

All conversations, even the really good ones, have to end at some point. One aspect of intentionality is
that it makes an effort needed to end the conversation a little easier than in a wandering dialogue.
Having an end in mind, even if it’s vague, helps the people involved to identify the right place to wind
things up.

Creating a Conversational Strategy

Intentionality is also where we create a conversational strategy that includes the plan for how to
conduct organizational communication, as envisioned by the organization’s leaders. Then, there is also a
process for developing communication practices that leaders want their people to use, which we call
strategic conversation.

Organizational conversation doesn’t exist just for pleasantries, increased engagement, or employee
empowerment. The main goal of fostering conversational leadership is to improve performance and
achieve better results for the business. The task of the leaders, then, includes guiding and supporting
that conversation so that it leads to the achievement of both the competitive and operational goals of
the organization.
The questions asked in discussing intentionality include:
 What business are we in?
 What are our challenges and opportunities?
 Where will this company be one, five, and ten years from now?

One of the differentiators from intentionality over the other three elements is that intimacy,
interactivity, and inclusion all help bring energy to the organization. Intentionality, on the other hand,
leads to a specific destination.

While it might seem counterintuitive that a conversational strategy is needed for what is really simply
defined as a conversation, you’ll see that having a strategy facilitates an essential connection between
the business, employee contributions, and the marketplace.

Sample Strategy Elements

A conversational strategy can include elements like the following:

 The majority of communications from the management team are not sent to employees as
memos and e-mails (which are directive by nature). Instead, they are posted in an internal blog
that employees visit regularly.
 The organization uses multiple channels to communicate with employees, including informal
internal blogs, a forum (or multiple forums in large companies), Facebook closed groups, etc.
 All external communications for the public are sent to employees first.
 Big meetings, including the delivery of the annual report or announcements about upcoming
projects, will be attended by employees who are also internal bloggers and will live blog from
the event.

A strategic conversation is simply one where the parties involved know what the company goals are,
what their topic is (even if it’s just loosely defined), and what they want to get out of a conversation. It’s
not about pushing a particular agenda or going after a defined result; those would be discussions and
negotiations, which are not the same as conversation. However, it will also include what to look for to
finish up the conversation.
COMMON LANGUAGE

Students of conversational leadership have discovered that the way the company brand is discussed
outside a company is inseparable from the conversations inside, and this is why strategic conversation is
so important. Organizational conversations need to be aligned with the direction and goals of the
company, and they need to provide support so that employees come to a unified organizational vision.

Part of creating a unified vision includes using a common language. If part of the company thinks a
particular task is a marketing task, but it is performed in the sales department, there is an issue. Sales
and marketing specialists will tell you how different marketing is from sales, and lumping things
haphazardly together makes it harder for them to function.
 Module Four: The Conversational Leadership Framework

This Module Will Cover:

 Getting Started
 What you’re Aiming For
 Creating the Conversation
 Identifying Your Purpose
 Involving Your Stakeholders
 Asking Questions Based on Critical Issues
 Collaborating with Social Technology
 Creating a Wisdom-Based Action Plan
 Innovative Leadership

GETTING STARTED
“Conversations are the way workers discover what they know, share it with their colleagues, and in
the process create new knowledge for the organization. In the new economy, conversations are the
most important form of work…so much so that the conversation is the organization.” (Alan Webber,
“What’s So New About the New Economy,” Harvard Business Review)

The term conversational leadership was created by Carolyn Baldwin, an educator, Appreciative Inquiry
practitioner, and World Café host. When she accepted a position as a school head, she invited staff to a
circle-style meeting, using appreciative inquiry and World Café techniques.

Circles have been used as safe, sacred conversation forums for years. Whether the gathering is of village
elders or a corporate meeting, the idea of a circle is that it is a place for sharing and gathering wisdom.
The ritual that kicks off the circle, and the creation of an atmosphere based in the methodologies used,
are part of a strategy to evoke deep conversation.
One idea of having people seated in a circle is that everyone present is equal – there is no head of the
table or power seat as depicted in corporate meeting rooms. The organizer typically calls the circle
together and has developed a question (in advance) that will help start conversations that draw out the
wisdom of those present.

Since conversational leadership has commonalities with appreciative inquiry, it’s important to note that
both approaches focus on positive circumstances. A helpful starting place for participants is to look at
what’s going well and where improvements and innovation can occur, as opposed to looking for things
to criticize or demean.

Circles are most appropriate when:

 People are ready to engage in deep, meaningful conversation with each other.
 Powerful questions are ready to be considered by groups with common interests and language.
 Participants are prepared for deep, profound change that can result from meeting this way.

Circles are not so great when:

 The organizational culture is not open to deep conversation.
 People are ready to speak intellectually about issues but not ready to open up emotionally or
spiritually.
 Participants are not ready to participate in a kick-off ritual. For example, a reflection exercise,
meditation, or prayer are common ways to start.
WHAT YOU’RE AIMING FOR

The aim of these deeply powerful conversations is to generate meaning. One result that participants find
is that although they might expect just another boring meeting, they come away feeling as though
people have actually listened to what they had to say and that in many cases, they connected with
people in what was the first time they had ever really spoken with one another. Often we seem to have
meetings just for the sake of meetings, so you need to know to go in that this is something very
different.

For example, if a board of directors is to meet and talk about fundraising, they will probably generate
lots of ideas on how to raise funds. That seems logical. However, when you use conversational
leadership, that board gets a chance to speak at a deeper level.

For example, when the board for the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa Bay, Florida, got
together, they hosted a conversational leadership style World Café. Instead of simply raising money for
the museum, they discovered that there was a lot of blue-collar and low-income families who couldn’t
afford to visit the museum, so they set up an endowment fund to provide the public with full access to
the museum.

In another stunning result of conversational leadership and tapping into the wisdom of participants, that
same museum was facing layoffs one year. They hosted a World Café hoping to figure out how to raise
$175,000. They ended up creating a plan that included $188,000 of new ideas that actually resulted in
raising $267,000 – all by tapping into the ideas of people at the café.

Participants at the meetings were not managers and directors. They were people with great ideas about
how to produce big revenues in a way that reflected the museum’s mission and values. People who
never saw one another because they worked opposite shifts or in different operational areas were able
to connect and share. Over time and with increased experience in the café philosophy, they find the
process keeps getting better, and the results keep improving. The museum has even invited participants
from outside the organization, including potential and actual museum visitors, to collaborate on
exhibits. This approach builds engagement in the museum, engages people at a community level, and is
helping to build the museum’s revenue.
Creating the Conversation
We’ve already mentioned that conversational leadership has a strategic component to it. In order to
realize the desired results, and to get efficient with what you are doing, you can review the framework
that has been created by Thomas Hurley and Juanita Brown:

This framework is straightforward and can be applied to a variety of meeting types, from single meetings
that take place during a single World Café to long-term strategic initiatives. World Café leaders must
teach the framework to their own participants so that they understand how their input influences
positive outcomes. This encourages them to be at their most open and engaged during your sessions.

As you consider the processes identified in the model, take a minute to consciously think about how you
will use them. Consider how they can strengthen your experience as a conscious leader, and in using
conversational leadership. As well, think about the impact that it could have if you don’t use one of the
elements effectively, or you leave it out.
IDENTIFYING YOUR PURPOSE

Key Questions

Before deciding on a conversation café purpose, determine why this method is best for your group. We
recommend that you attend a few cafés if possible so that you can see and feel for yourself how
powerful this approach can be.

Then, determine the purpose of your café. You also need to recognize the intention that is guiding you.
This will help you in the design of your particular café and has a large bearing on your success.

When we speak about the purpose and strategic intent, it might sound very prescriptive. However, in
reality, it must remain flexible in terms of how you will get where you are going. It also needs flexibility
so that you can adapt and improvise as the action unfolds.

The Physical Setup

A conversation café is actually designed to look like a café. Tables are small and round, and the place is
decorated to reflect the atmosphere of a local, traditional café. Checked tablecloths, a small
arrangement of flowers on each table, and availability of refreshments are all part of the mood. Don’t
dismiss an element thinking that it is unnecessary, because to do so means that you aren’t hosting a
conversation café.

Instead, ask yourself:

 Why are we gathering people for this conversation?
 What needs or problems will we address?
The Finishing Touches

You can even create a special name for your conversation café to reflect the purpose. Some creative
ones include:
 Strategy Café
 Product Development Café
 Fundraising Café
 Operations Café

When you settle on the purpose, it’s common to see a shift from what leaders thought the café would
accomplish, to something at a deeper level. For example, the initial purpose of a conference might be to
provide expert information on the economy. However, a café creates a collaborative space where
participants can exchange local, regional, and international experience while generating knowledge
focused on answering the questions posed.

Above and Beyond

It’s not unusual for the most powerful café outcome to involve the discovery of the right questions to
ask about a particular issue. They may also provide a forum for a situation to be explored for the very
first time. These are intangible outcomes, just like forming new relationships, information sharing, and
gathering contributions from people typically excluded from strategy or decision making in the
company.
INVOLVING YOUR STAKEHOLDERS

The Importance of Involvement

If you want to really access a diversity of thought and collective wisdom, it’s critical to invite the right
stakeholders. Even once you have your initial thoughts about who should be there, it’s worth a second
look to see who else can help you achieve your purpose, what other perspectives might bring valuable
insights, and who would benefit by being involved in the conversation.

In old-style command and control management, it wasn’t unusual to deliberately leave people out of
the decision making, particularly if their job roles were going to be affected. People also got left out if
they offered a different perspective on the status quo, or they asked too many questions.

In conversational leadership, we encourage questions and want meaningful conversations. This cannot
be achieved by inviting people who don’t have different perspectives or who aren’t comfortable
participating in a conversational approach. Your outcomes are better when you can draw in people who
were perhaps previously isolated from conversation. This isn’t that unusual since we encourage lots of
cross-functional dialogue in the workplace these days, and it shouldn’t be overlooked in your invitation
list. Think of it as nurturing a space that encourages an ecology of thought to get at a deep
understanding of important issues, and to develop workable solutions.

Applying the Concepts

Some of the great examples we’ve heard of include inviting a cross-section of internal staff as well as
external product and service users. For example, in the case of a school-based project, teachers,
principals, and board members would probably be expected. But you could also invite students and
members of the public in the area where the school is located.

In the case of a café for health facilities, like a nursing home, you could include staff from all
departments, residents (patients), suppliers of goods and services, and members of the community from
the surrounding area. You could also include people with experience working with nursing homes in
similar or vastly different communities.
International companies, even those with thousands of employees, have held World Café style events
around the world so they could include as many people as possible. Nokia did this by hosting cafés in
nine countries and involving more than 3,000 employees when they reviewed their core values. It was
an amazing undertaking, and culminated in an international café they called a “Nokia Jam” that included
all their employees worldwide for a 72-hour strategy dialogue. By being so inclusive and including
people from all functions, cultures, and hierarchies, their new values were widely embraced.

Summary

The more open you are to a diversity of participants, and the more you prepare them for the
experience, the more meaningful conversations and better results you can expect. If you decide that
involving all your key stakeholders is too expensive or time-consuming, or there aren’t enough people
ready for these conversations, then your organization isn’t quite ready for conversational leadership or
the World Café approach just yet. Keep working on it.
ASKING QUESTIONS BASED ON CRITICAL ISSUES

You’re probably considering a conversational leadership approach to some important questions. Since
the questions you ask to become the impetus for both action and change, you want to create them
carefully. Depending on the situation and groups you work with, you don’t even have to design the exact
questions themselves – your participants and stakeholders could do that as part of this process.

For example, if your organization no longer lives the values stated in your guiding vision for the
company, you could create a topic statement and then have some stakeholders create a few questions.
Then, as part of your conversations, those questions will likely lead to other questions.

From an appreciative inquiry perspective, we know it’s important to phrase your questions engagingly
and positively. Here are some additional guidelines to help you create the best questions possible:
 State all questions affirmatively.
 Start out with a leading question that can build on the affirmative topic choice.
 Provide a broad definition of the topic.
 Invite participants to speak in story and narrative.
 Avoid report talk and use rapport talk in your approach.
 Be okay with ambiguity; this gives participants space to explore and tap into their own creativity
and wisdom.
 Value and appreciate the way things are.
 Help the person identify experiences worth appreciating by helping tap into their creativity and
imagination.
 Sincerely project unconditional positive regard to the person and the process.
 Provide a safe place to evoke essential values, aspirations, and inspiration.
In an appreciative inquiry, each question must be framed positively, and it will include two parts: a
positive image followed by positive action. While a café approach is not the same as an appreciate
inquiry interview, both parts are presented here to guide you:
 Part I: The question will evoke a real, personal experience, as a narrative that helps participants
share the best experiences and learning from the past.
 Part II: In this part of the question, the interviewer works beyond the past to envision the best
future.

COLLABORATING WITH SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY

When you plan a space for conversational leadership, you need to concern yourself with the physical
space, the social space, and the information that’s being shared. In doing so, the whole environment
becomes a collaborative learning technology.

Establishing the right atmosphere – one of shared purpose, collective intelligence, and planning action –
doesn’t happen by accident. We have to be intentional about choosing methods of engagement that
allow the process to evolve. If you miss this step, you’ll quickly see how stakeholders from diverse
backgrounds can become polarized. This will lead to a long list of ideas with no way to choose solutions
or initiate action.

The development of conversational leadership has spawned the evolution of very effective technologies
for purposeful collaboration and conversation, including World Café, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space,
Scenario Planning, and others. In all, there are more than 60 recorded methods for systems change, so it
is likely that you will find something that works for you if nothing here resonates.

In addition to change methodology, the development of digital and virtual technology is also of great
benefit. Online collaboration tools and project management software, web conferencing, virtual
communities of practice, crowdsourcing, and social media can all be part of developing large, robust,
coordinated action plans.
Conversational leadership leverages the full scope of technology to integrate tools in a skilful
architecture of cascading action. If the conversation is the core process, then the practitioner needs to
be intentional about designing methods for people to think together in new ways. For example, Mike
Szymanczyk (former CEO of Altria Group) was part of a team that developed a Game Plan where
participants were assisted through dialogue and inquiry to help discover the big questions they needed
to ask. The game then takes them into the next steps of creating initiatives that reply to those critical
questions and lead to action. They incorporated World Café conversations, dialogue circles, open space
sessions, scenario planning, and outdoor experiential learning exercises.

Without the skilful application of social technologies, the conversation can deteriorate into discussion
and argument, and the only solutions presented are owned by the people with the loudest voices or
perceived as having the most power. Plan carefully, and you will realize the changes and results you are
looking for.
C R E A T I N G A W I S D O M - B A S E D A C T I O N P LA N

The outcome of conversational leadership must be wise action-taking that meets the stated purpose,
achieves the strategic intent, and gets the company moving where people want it to be. When leaders
recognize that this holistic, living network of conversations is creating the future they design, they can
then focus that network on the critical questions. They can design tools and infrastructure, like the Altria
Game Plan process, that makes sense for their organization and allow efficient translation from the
conversations into action plans.

Best practices in every sector demonstrate that successful outcomes and measurable results are most
likely when key stakeholders work together face-to-face and online to create effective engagement. This
is true whether you wish to strategize, increase innovation, improve processes, or foster community
connections.

The result of our conversations has to be that the collective intelligence and wisdom leads to effective
action, and builds the future of our organizations.

INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP

Developing Leaders

Schools, executive leadership programs, and most job experiences do not prepare people very well for
the personal capacity or process skills required to respond to today’s organizational challenges. In fact,
many school systems have cut programs that would encourage students to learn how to think creatively
or to understand innovation.

In order to support the development of real leaders (people who epitomize the skills, knowledge, and
personality to guide collaborative teams and systems), we need to encourage people to learn
continuously, to adapt, and to create long-term value in what they do. We might also have to teach
them how to think creatively and what it means to have a workplace that honours innovation and
invention.
Leaders aren’t just made into leaders by way of education. Lots of leaders are very open to education,
but they don’t lead very well because they don’t establish relationships very well. If you Google the
phrase, “Are leaders made or born?” you’ll get over 33 million results. There is lots of debate that goes
on about this and part of the reason is that people don’t agree. The reality is, however, that even if
someone is a “natural” leader (as in they were born that way), they will still need to learn many things,
including how to communicate effectively.

Building Common Ground

Simon Sinek, leadership author and ethnographer, states that you might have people you can rely on,
but you only have a certain number of them that you trust. This isn’t a result of skill or experience; trust
is based on what you believe. Trust comes from a sense of common values and common beliefs.

As Sinek explains it, this commonality is really apparent when we travel. Say you lived and grew up in
New York, and you are a patriotic American. You don’t know anyone from Los Angeles, but when you
travel to Paris and meet someone on the train which is from Los Angeles, it’s as if you are long lost
friends as you high five and exclaim, “Oh hey! Great to meet you!”

In order to lead the conversation, then, it makes a lot of sense that we want to foster commonalities,
just as we want to teach people what it means to not only contribute to a conversation but also to
encourage conversation in others.
Questions to Consider

To develop conversational leadership in your organization, consider the following questions:

 Do the leaders see the organization as a network where there is real work taking place in the
conversations going on?
 How is the organization (and you in it) leveraging the power of conversation as a core process?
 How much of your and your colleagues’ working time is dedicated to creating the right questions
and answers?
 How skilled are you and other organizational leaders about the use of techniques and
technology for collaboration, sharing intelligence, and coordinated action?
 Are your work areas (including meeting areas) conducive to informal sharing and collaboration?
 How does your organization help leaders cultivate the skills and competencies that they need to
be successful in conversational leadership?

These are important factors to consider as you look at how you can best be a part of conversational
leadership, and how to make sure that the best results come out of it.
 Module Five: World Café

This Module Will Cover:

 Setting Up
 The Innovation Space

SETTING UP

Setting up the Café

Let’s set up an imaginary café. First, we need to give it a title. If you already have a pressing question or
need among your group, use that. If not, here’s an example for you to live out. In this imaginary café,
we’re sharing the spirit of individual reflections through some creative license from real cafés.

Imagine that the room is set up with small, café-style round tables. There are chairs for no more than
four people at each table. Just like any café, there is a small vase with a tiny bunch of flowers, or maybe
just one flower, and a checked tablecloth. There is also a cup full of felt markers and a newsprint
tablecloth on top of the fabric cloth.
You can host a World Café for twelve people or 1000 people. The concept includes the notion that there
are conversations at the table, and then people move to new tables. Ideas are shared, and more ideas
are created, and then people move to new tables again. This is why people say that in a World Café,
conversations take place at the tables, but the magic happens in the spaces between the tables where
energy, innovation, and ideas coalesce.
Round 1: Starting the Conversation

The host starts the conversation by saying something like this:

“Welcome to our café on <the topic at hand, such as values>. Let me start by introducing how we will
get started today. We’re going to have three rounds of conversations. As your host, I will let you know
when each round is coming to a close. One person will stay at the table as a table host and will welcome
new guests to the table, who are coming from a conversation at their previous table. With them, they’ll
bring ideas from their previous table. At each table, it’s important to capture the essence of what’s been
said on your chart paper. You’ll link and build on those ideas.

“Let’s start with the question I have ready for you: What are you learning about the use of questions as a
way to engage collaborative learning and collective wisdom that could be of help to someone?

“Now, some of you know each other, and some don’t, so please introduce yourselves to your tables
before you jump in.”

The introductions begin, and the conversations unfold. Participants will start sharing their insights into
the question. That leads to questions that participants politely and positively ask of themselves and each
other. They will most likely discuss the definition of values and identify the company values as they
currently exist. They’ll ask questions about what’s changed, or could change, and what that means to
them. They can record key thoughts and ideas on the tablecloth.

Depending on the size of your group, you might leave them to their conversations for 15, 20, or 30
minutes. The longer you can leave them, the deeper their conversations will be.
THE INNOVATION SPACE

Round 2: Connections Start

When it’s time to move to other tables, invite one person to stay at each table as the host. Introductions
need to be made again. The table host will encourage participants to refer to the notes that have been
made on the tablecloth already and to continue adding to those notes as they engage in conversation
about the topic question. As participants look at the tablecloth, it will spur them to make comments,
and the conversation continues. They can add their thoughts to the work in progress on the tablecloth.

You can have as many rounds of conversations as are necessary, with participants moving between
tables.
Round 3: Back to the Beginning

The café host will invite everyone to return to their original table and to spend a few minutes sharing
how the conversation evolved as they moved to other tables. The table host can ask, “What is it that we
don’t know yet at this table?” and encourage people to continue sharing. Then they can ask, “What
deeper questions do we still have about <topic>?”

The table leader will help participants develop a sense of the two or three questions that everyone feels
are really important. Have a person volunteer to be the recorder, and to write each question on its own
large sticky note.

Round 4: Conversation of the Whole

Once the sticky notes are ready, the café host will open up a conversation of the whole to see what is
emerging in the middle space; that moveable, energized, creative space that exists between all the
tables. The host will also gather all the sticky notes, post them in an appropriate location, and help the
group bring their thoughts together.

Remember that you are focused on working with questions. Even problem statements (“No one in this
company knows what the company values are.”) are re-worked as questions (“Why don’t our employees
know what our values are?” or, “How can we make sure that employees work in alignment with our
values?”).
 Final Verdict

Effective leaders understand how powerful an opportunity can be when they can tap into the
intelligence, wisdom, and innovation present in their workforce. Conversational leadership provides the
space and infrastructure for knowledge sharing to take place; for employees, stakeholders, and the
community to be involved in discussing big, important questions; and to generate solutions that people
within the organization can take action on.

Throughout this Conversational Leadership course, you will learn to understand the wisdom inherent in
encouraging conversational leadership. The course is designed to help to understand the four I’s of
conversational leadership as well as to apply the principles of conversational leadership to improve
results and organize a simple World Café as an example of conversational leadership. Overall, this
course will give you the opportunity to pursue a wide range of knowledge for a rewarding career or a
scope to pursue more courses at a higher level.