CoachingOurselves was co-founded by Henry Mintzberg and Phil LeNir. It is built on a simple but powerful idea: we learn best not from courses or content alone, but through structured conversations with peers about our own work.
Its approach centres on short, practical guidebooks known as topics. These are written by experienced thinkers and practitioners, including people such as Henry Mintzberg, Amy Edmondson, Edgar Schein, and David Cooperrider. Their topics cover areas such as leadership, psychological safety, culture, helping, strategy, and change.
Small groups use these topics to reflect on real issues, share experience, and think together. The emphasis is not on teaching theory, but on helping people make better sense of what they already know, face, and practise day to day.
In this sense, CoachingOurselves is deeply conversational. Learning emerges through dialogue, not instruction. Insight comes from interaction, not transmission.
That is why I was delighted to write a new CoachingOurselves topic on Conversational Leadership.
The guidebook introduces the idea of Conversational Leadership and invites small groups to explore how conversation shapes leadership in everyday work: how we listen, question, disagree, make sense of issues, and take responsibility for the conversations that matter.
It sits naturally within the CoachingOurselves approach: practical, reflective, and grounded in people’s own experience.
If you would like to learn more about CoachingOurselves and the guidebooks they have available, including mine on Conversational Leadership, here is where to go: CoachingOurselves.
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Photo Credits: Midjourney (Public Domain)
