Conversational Leadership doesn’t depend on formal authority, but our freedom to act varies widely. In hierarchical or controlling organizations, taking visible initiative may be difficult or risky. We can work with the conversational freedom we have, taking small steps, learning what happens, and looking for what becomes possible next.
Conversational Leadership is something anyone can practise. It does not depend on having a leadership position or formal authority.
But what if you work in an organization where you have very little freedom to act? Perhaps the culture is strongly hierarchical or command-and-control. Perhaps your manager expects things to be done their way. Taking the initiative yourself might be seen as stepping beyond your authority.
This is not necessarily about being afraid to speak up. The problem may be that doing something visibly different could be interpreted as subversive.
Imagine, for example, that you decide to convene a Knowledge Café because you believe people need to talk about an important issue. In an open organization, your manager may welcome the initiative. In another, the same action might be interpreted as going behind your manager’s back, questioning their authority, or creating a forum they cannot control.
That is a real constraint, and we should not dismiss it.
In the 1980s, I worked for Lotus Development
in the UK as a software development manager. One of my responsibilities was localizing Lotus 1-2-3, the spreadsheet that was one of the dominant software products of its time. Initially, this meant producing French, German, and Italian versions of the software. But I soon learned that localization involved much more than translating words. Software needed to accommodate different date and time formats, currencies, character sets, and all sorts of other national and cultural differences that I have long since forgotten.
The key lesson was that internationalization couldn’t be bolted onto a finished product. If a product was designed properly from the beginning, localization was relatively straightforward. If it was not, producing international versions could become difficult, expensive, and sometimes impossible.
In 1988, Lotus asked me to move from the UK to its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My title, believe it or not, was International Czar. It was a wonderful job. My responsibility was to work across all the development groups and product lines to help ensure that Lotus products were designed from day one for the international market. And it went well beyond software development. I worked with lawyers on international trademarks, with manufacturing on production, with marketing on international marketing materials, and with many other parts of the organization.
My remit stretched across much of Lotus. There was just one small problem. I had virtually no authority.
A powerful title without the power
I discovered this very quickly after arriving in Cambridge. Many of the development managers had little incentive to do what I was asking. Their objectives, measurements, and bonuses were largely tied to the North American market. They were under intense pressure to ship products on time. If making a product international added work or threatened the schedule, why would they do it? From their point of view, this was perfectly rational. They were working within the constraints of the system.
So I went to Frank King, the Senior Vice President of Development, and told him I needed some authority if I was going to do the job he wanted me to do. His answer was wonderfully direct: “You’re not going to get it. Live with it.”
I was not particularly happy about that. For a while, I wondered how on earth I was supposed to do my job. But Frank had, perhaps inadvertently, given me one of the most useful lessons of my working life. If I couldn’t get things done through authority, I had to find another way.
I started with relationships
So I began visiting people. I sought out development managers and directors across the organization, but I didn’t initially go to them asking for things. I went to say hello. I introduced myself. We talked. We had coffee. Sometimes I invited them to lunch, perhaps in the Lotus cafeteria or occasionally somewhere outside. I wanted to understand what they were doing and, above all, to get to know them.
Some of those relationships became quite personal. I had moved to America with my wife, our three young children, and their grandmother. I would show people photographs of my family. We talked about life outside work as well as the work itself. I wasn’t consciously applying some clever management technique. I was simply building relationships with the people I would need to work with.
Meanwhile, my small team and I began documenting what internationalization actually required. We eventually produced a substantial International Localization Handbook. I still have a copy. When I returned to people, I had something concrete to talk about, and I could gradually start asking for what we needed.
Working with what was possible
Sometimes a development manager had the time and resources to make the changes we needed. Sometimes they didn’t. When they couldn’t help directly, they might introduce me to someone in their group who could. I could then work with that person, help them understand what was required, and sometimes find resources or support that made the work possible.
Quite often, the changes themselves were not particularly onerous. If a programmer understood the international requirements early enough, they could often write code that made later localization relatively straightforward. So I spent a great deal of time talking directly with the people writing the software.
This was not always politically straightforward. Lotus was not one homogeneous culture. In some parts of the organization, going around a senior manager and talking directly with someone further down the hierarchy could get me into serious trouble. Elsewhere it was quite acceptable. I had to learn how each part of the organization worked and what was possible.
Some managers simply refused to cooperate. A few effectively threw me out of their offices and told me not to talk to anyone in their groups. That created a different problem. I couldn’t simply ignore them, but neither could I bulldoze my way through them. I had to work carefully around the constraints they imposed. That is another story in itself.
Most situations, though, were less dramatic. People were not necessarily opposed to what I was trying to achieve. They had their own pressures, deadlines, and priorities. My job was often to find ways in which we could help each other.
Relationships worked both ways
Over time, something else happened. The relationships stopped being simply about what I needed from people. I was British, newly arrived in America, and some of the people I met were interested in Britain or Europe. Some had ambitions to work there one day. If somebody genuinely wanted to move to the UK or elsewhere in Europe, I would do what I could to help them. I knew people. I understood parts of the European organization. Sometimes I could make an introduction or offer useful advice.
This wasn’t a transaction. I wasn’t thinking, “I’ll help you if you help me.” These were people I had come to know, and if I could help them with something that mattered to them, why wouldn’t I? But inevitably it changed the nature of our working relationships. We were no longer simply representatives of different functions negotiating over requirements. We were people who knew one another and were trying to get things done together.
A little conversational magic
One member of my team, Eric Wilson, understood the power of conversation particularly well. Eric was an extrovert and occasionally a little difficult to manage, which was also part of the fun of working with him.
Sometimes Eric and I would find ourselves in an elevator with a senior vice president or another senior manager. They might know who we were but keep their distance. Eric would glance at me, give me a little wink, and start a conversation. He might casually ask me about the work we were doing with another development group, knowing perfectly well that the senior manager standing beside us could hear every word.
I would respond, and the two of us would continue talking. We weren’t talking to the senior manager. We weren’t asking them for anything. But we knew they were listening. It was a tiny piece of conversational magic.
Looking back
My move to America was originally intended to be a one-year secondment. I stayed for something closer to two and a half years. By the time I returned to the UK, internationalization was far more deeply embedded across Lotus’s product development. It wasn’t perfect, but pretty much every product was designed well enough to be localized cost-effectively. In my final appraisal, I received the highest performance rating.
What strikes me, looking back, is the strange contrast at the heart of the story. I had been given the grandiose title of International Czar. My remit extended across a large international company. I was expected to influence lawyers, marketers, manufacturing people, software developers, development directors and senior executives. And I had almost no formal authority over any of them.
At the time, I would not have called what I was doing Conversational Leadership. I had not developed the idea. But looking back, that is exactly how I see it. I couldn’t tell people what to do, so I talked with them. I got to know them. I tried to understand the constraints they faced. I helped them where I could. I connected people. I found resources. I worked at different levels of the organization. I learned when to push, when to go around an obstacle, and when to accept that something simply wasn’t possible. Above all, I built relationships through hundreds of conversations.
I sometimes wonder whether Frank King did me a favour when he refused to give me the authority I asked for. Had he given it to me, I might have spent two and a half years telling people what to do. Instead, I had to learn how to work with people when I had no power to compel them.
Looking back more than thirty years later, I think that experience was one of the roots of what I now call Conversational Leadership.
Work with the conversational freedom you have
Rather than starting with what we cannot do, there is another question we can ask:
What conversational freedom do I have from where I am?
The answer will depend on the circumstances.
Some managers will welcome people taking the initiative. Others may be uncomfortable with anything they have not authorised themselves. And in large organizations, it is not only about your manager. You must consider departmental boundaries, competing interests, established relationships, and organizational politics.
This requires judgement. Conversational Leadership is not a license to ignore organizational realities or put ourselves unnecessarily at risk.
But it doesn’t need to be announced, labeled, or turned into an initiative.
We can talk with a colleague over coffee or lunch. We can ask someone how they see a problem and listen carefully to their response. We can introduce two people who would benefit from talking with each other. In our own work, we may have perfectly legitimate reasons to bring people from different areas together around an issue.
Within our own team, we can ask better questions, listen more carefully, make space for disagreement and give people time to think aloud.
These are ordinary conversations. But they are also opportunities to practise Conversational Leadership.
Sometimes the sensible thing may simply be to wait.
Don’t assume you have to act alone
There is a danger in asking only what I can do. It can make Conversational Leadership sound like the actions of a lone individual trying to work around the system.
Often the more useful question is:
Who else can I talk with?
A conversation with one person may reveal that they have been thinking about the same issue. They may see something we have missed. They may know somebody else who should be part of the conversation.
What seems impossible for one person may become possible when people start talking to one another.
This does not mean forming a coalition to challenge authority. Conversation does not always have to serve change. We may simply be trying to understand an issue better, learn how other people see it, or make sense of a difficult situation together.
And through doing that, new possibilities sometimes appear.
Look for the adjacent possible
This is where the idea of the adjacent possible becomes useful.
Rather than asking what we would do if we had more authority or worked in a more open culture, we can look for what is possible from where we are now.
Perhaps we cannot convene a Knowledge Café, but we can invite three colleagues for coffee. Perhaps we cannot change how our department holds meetings, but we can ask a different question in the next one. Perhaps we cannot challenge a decision directly, but we can talk with someone about the assumptions behind it.
The adjacent possible is not the change we would ideally like to make. It is the next thing that is possible within the constraints we face.
That does not mean the small step will necessarily lead anywhere. The conversation may go nowhere. The question may change nothing. We may discover that the constraints are greater than we realised.
But that is part of the learning.
We try something small where it seems sensible. We pay attention to what happens. We may learn something that changes our understanding of the situation. A conversation may lead to another conversation. We may discover someone who sees things differently. An informal discussion may reveal possibilities that we could not previously see.
We cannot know in advance.
This is not a smaller version of some larger change programme. It is a way of exploring what is possible.
Conversation can be part of everyday work
We sometimes make leadership too conspicuous. We imagine that taking responsibility means standing up, taking charge or launching something new. Conversational Leadership can be much more ordinary than that.
It can be found in the conversations that are already part of our working lives. In the questions we ask. In how well we listen. In whether we make space for other people to think aloud. In whether we connect people who might benefit from talking with each other.
Sometimes we may have the freedom to convene a roomful of people. Sometimes we may only be able to talk with one colleague over coffee.
We do not all have the same power or freedom, and we should not pretend otherwise. But we can pay attention to the conversational possibilities that are actually available to us rather than those we wish we had.
We can act where it seems sensible, pay attention to what happens, learn and look again. And then ask: What has become possible now?
Perhaps it is less about how much freedom or power we have and more about noticing what remains possible within the constraints we face. A conversation may lead nowhere, or it may open something unexpected. What might we discover if we paid closer attention to these small conversational possibilities in everyday work?
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