This post is a short introduction to the concept of Conversational Leadership and its rationale.
All we need to do is to make sure we keep talking | Stephen Hawking (source)
The Rationale Behind Conversational Leadership
We live in an increasingly hyper-connected, dynamic, rapidly changing world that has resulted in massive complexity over the last 75 years. 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 highly volatile, unpredictable, confusing, and ambiguous world.
This complexity is accelerating as we enter the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), in which disruptive technologies and trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly changing the way we live and work.
We are entering what EY calls the Transformative Age.
We are living in the Transformative Age.
Much like the Industrial Revolution, we can expect a fundamental shift in everything we know — not only in the speed at which all these changes are taking place, but also in our increasing reliance on connectivity.
This is the signature difference of the Transformative Age: being connected, whether it’s to data, interfaces, people or experiences.
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 to interact and work with each other. We need to develop 21st-century skills.
There is no silver bullet to our challenges. Conversational Leadership is simply 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.
In an increasingly complex world, appointed leaders simply don't know enough to decide what is new and better.
Leadership is a group sport, not an individual heroic activity.
The term Conversational Leadership has two components, leadership, and conversation. Let’s explain each in turn.
Leadership
Are leaders born or made? This is a false dichotomy - leaders are neither born nor made. Leaders choose to be leaders.
We need to see leadership as a practice, not a position of authority, and we must realize that leadership is a choice we can all make.
In a complex world, a single leader or a small elite does not have the ability to make sense of the world or set the vision and control things toward a better future, however hard they try. In a complex world, grand visions, plans, and control are mostly counter-productive. We need a distributed, participatory, more democratic form of leadership.
Distinguishing leadership from authority helps us begin to see that if we understand leadership as a practice, as an activity, then it becomes available to anybody high or low, any place or position.
We need everyone who cares deeply about an issue to take responsibility, step up to the mark, and lead through their influence. We need everyone to be engaged.
Leadership is a practice, not a position of authority | Ronald Heifetz (source)Anyone who has a sphere of influence can be considered a leader.
Conversation
We need to recognize the extraordinary but underutilized power of face-to-face conversation. In a complex world, we need to make a better sense of things, improve our decision-making and strategizing, and enhance our ability to influence and develop agency. Lastly, we need to renew the way we live and work together. Conservation plays a massive role in all of this.
How do we lead as leaders without the power of authority? We do it through influence, through the relationships we build, and through the conversations we convene, initiate, and engage in.
One of the ways of thinking about leadership is thinking about convening conversations that might not happen otherwise.
Conversation is a relationship-building and community-building tool. It helps us better understand each other and, in doing so, better understand ourselves. It helps us to build trust and respect for each other. It helps us form and sustain strong interpersonal relationships, which enables us to cooperate better and collaborate.
Furthermore, conversation is a collective sensemaking tool. It helps us to figure out new ways of seeing the world by applying cognitive diversity to bring different perspectives to bear on an issue. This, in turn, leads to improved decision-making, better strategy-making, and improved innovation.
We all need to come together in conversation to make sense of things and to improve our decision-making.
After making those decisions, we must develop the agency to act on them and work together. Again, we do this through conversation.
Transforming our ability to converse effectively is at the heart of Conversational Leadership. One might even say that “leadership IS conversation.”
What is the work of leadership? | Patricia Shaw (source)Conversational Leadership
Conversational Leadership is about appreciating the transformative power of conversation, practicing leadership, and adopting a conversational approach to working together in a complex world.
So leadership and conversation are what you might term the two pillars of Conversational Leadership.
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Principles of Conversational Leadership
Conversational Leadership rests on five fundamental principles.
Take responsibility. We need to take ownership of the changes we wish to see in the world, whether in our jobs, personal lives, or society. We can wait forever for others to do this, but we must take responsibility for it ourselves if we are serious about change.
Embrace complexity thinking. The world and how we live and work together are becoming increasingly interconnected and more complex. Complex problems have unique characteristics that make them impossible to solve in our old ways. We need to understand complexity better, how the world works, and how we can work together better.
Practice leadership. The world is too complex and faces far too many issues for only a small number of leaders to make a difference. We need a new, more democratic form of leadership. We all have influence and the potential to lead and make a difference. Leadership is a choice.
Converse effectively. We need to improve our conversational skills and habits to work more effectively. These are the habitual ways we communicate with each other face-to-face and the conversational methods we employ to convene group conversations. Conversing effectively is at the very heart of Conversational Leadership.
Nurture community. We need to nurture community. An organization is a community of human beings and not a collection of human resources or human capital. A real community is one where its members care about their work and genuinely care about each other.
Some critical points about Conversational Leadership
- Conversational Leadership is a personal choice. Conversational Leadership is a personal choice. It is not an organizational development (OD) or change initiative inflicted on you. It is a personal commitment to become a conversational leader.
- Conversational Leadership is a journey. Conversational Leadership is not a course you take or a certificate that is awarded to you. It is a personal, life-long commitment to a journey of continuous learning and improvement. You can take on as much or as little as you have the time or inclination. Conversational Leadership is highly personal. Everyone takes a different path and comes away with something different.
- Conversational Leadership is an evolving discipline. Conversational Leadership has a short history. It is a relatively new, evolving discipline, but by the day, more and more people are talking or writing about it though many do not use the Conversational Leadership label. We have much to learn about the subject.
If you have any questions, then my Q&A page may answer them.
Posts that link to this post
- The Dialogic Mindset Leading Emergent Change in a Complex World
- Two Interesting Theories of Reason Social reasoning and the narrative paradigm
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