Event: the Great Unheard Knowledge Café (emea/americas) Thursday 4th, May 2023

Title: The Great Unheard Knowledge Café

Region: EMEA/AMERICAS

Date: Thursday 4th, May 2023

Time: 17:00 to 19:00, London time (Your Time Zone)

Location: Online Zoom Event

Price: Free

Registration: Thursday, 4th May (EMEA/AMERICAS)

Choose a Café to suit your time zone

To make this Café accessible worldwide, it is being run twice, at times convenient for wherever you are in the world. You are free to choose either Café.

The first Café will be held on Thursday, 4th May, from 17:00 to 19:00 London, UK time to suit participants in the EMEA and Americas regions. You can check the time in your location on timeanddate.com.

The second Café will be held on Thursday, 11th May, from 08:00 to 10:00 London, UK time to suit participants in the Asia-Pacific region. You can check the time in your location on timeanddate.com.

Theme: Great Unheard Knowledge Café

In our framing talk (which shall be short), we will share our experience of what it takes to get unheard voices heard and also why sometimes silence is an active choice that speaks volumes. For us, silence happens in the context of specific relationships and situations and is soaked in conscious and unconscious patterns of power - some of which can be named and some which are inherently elusive (or seen as undiscussable in polite society).

What passes for common sense in institutions often demands that people break the silence and speak up, creating autocratic climates in which people find their own ways of complying or rebelling - often in the spirit of avoiding making public what they don’t want to share in a workplace setting where the intentions of those requesting an end to silence are instrumental rather than relational

We see the Knowledge Café as a continuation of a research process that will probably see both of us to our graves - but do buy the book as well!

John Higgins and Mark Cole

The Café Speakers

John Higgins

John Higgins is a long-term nerd in the field of organizational theory and practice, obsessed with the use and abuse of power in all its forms. He’s published numerous books and articles (including for high priest journals such as the HBR) while trying to ensure that he doesn’t drink too much of the corporate kool-aid that promises instant remedies to chronic realities. If you want to find out more about the murky waters his research takes him into, go to www.johnhigginsresearch.com

Mark Cole

Mark Cole spent 33 years as a corporate drone, unhelpfully suggesting to people that it would be sensible for them to toe the company line. Then, in 2016, he found his true voice and, importantly, something to say about the world of work, meaning that since then, he has sought to straddle salaried life and a thoughtful desire to engage with that context critically (very often a most comfortable position to assume).

Most of his 40 years in the workplace have been spent in developmental roles in and around the healthcare sector. These days, he is fascinated by the presence of power in the workplace – and, in particular, the ways in which voice and silence are shaped by that context.

Mark and John blog at www.radicalod.org, and you can find out more about Mark – his professional practice and his scholarship – at www.markcole.org.

The Café Process

After Mark and John have introduced the theme, they will present us with a question to ponder. Following that, we will have three rounds of small group conversations, during which we will divide into groups of three or four and enter Zoom break-out rooms to discuss the question.

The question we will be exploring is,

Where do the silences in your life exist, and what significance do they hold for you?

At the end of our small group discussions, we will reconvene in the main room to share our individual reflections and insights with the entire group.

Reading Material

Please read the forward to Mark and John's book by Megan Reitz if you have the time, as it will help set the context for the conversation. It is not a prerequisite.

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