In this Café, I give a short introduction to the concept of Conversational Leadership. I explain it is about appreciating the transformative power of conversation, practicing leadership, and adopting a conversational approach to the way we work together in a complex world. I then initiate a conversation about how we might practice it.
Theme: Introduction to Conversational Leadership
Format: Knowledge Café
Delivery: Face-to-face , Zoom or Microsoft Teams
Duration: 60, 90 or 120 minutes
Introduction
This Café is one in a series of Knowledge Cafés on Conversational Leadership that I run face-to-face, on Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Each Café is themed on material from my online blook on Conversational Leadership.
If you are unfamiliar with the Knowledge Café concept, this event is participatory, though I can run it as a webinar.
Theme
We live in an increasingly hyper-connected, dynamic, rapidly changing world that, over the last 75 years, has resulted in massive complexity. We can conceive of two worlds – the old world before the Second World War and the new world that has emerged since 1945.
Not only are our technological systems complex, but we human beings are immensely complex, non-rational, emotional creatures full of cognitive biases. This socio-technical complexity has led to a world that is highly volatile, unpredictable, confusing, and ambiguous.
Our past ways of thinking about the world and our old command and control, hierarchical ways of working no longer serve us well in this complex environment.
If we wish to improve the world, we need to learn to see it in a new light, think about it differently, and discover better ways in which to interact and work with each other.
There is no silver bullet to our challenges. Conversational Leadership is a way forward that recognizes we are dealing with a new environment – a complex world that requires different ways of seeing the world, thinking, and behaving.
Format
In this Café, I talk about the theme for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the participants and the time available, and then pose the Café question
What is Conversational Leadership and how do you practice it?
We then go into Café mode.
Reading Material
This post in my blook is optional reading material for the participants before or after the Café.