Conversational Leadership – Help leaders join the conversation

Many leaders have had the art of conversation drilled out of them. There is a strong bias to action in many businesses today, and the thought that a meeting isn’t important if action isn’t being taken – without realizing that the relationship building part is critically important precisely because when action is needed, or a crisis-level response is needed, those relationships will be put into play.  Conversational leadership recognizes conversation as a core process in shaping and evolving an organization’s culture and affecting how people behave.

Good skills for conversational leadership include:

  • Meet people where they naturally gather – don’t always call meetings in your own space and time.
  • Focus on designing effective questions and probing responses rather than firing away answers all the time.  Engage people in discussion, rather than looking for an easy tactical “answer” of “go do (this)”.
  • Invite the unexpected, be open to what people have to say.
  • Be a good storyteller, and enable a shared understanding.  Let go of your own commitment to what you believe are ‘the facts’, and construct a common story between the group.

In companies with weak relationships, crisis management is often incredibly poor.  There are ways to make meetings more productive from a relationship perspective, but first, people need to accept the fact that if they don’t know their colleagues, they won’t be able to work well together when needed.  Getting leaders on board withi being open to conversation for the sake of conversation is an important step in building a culture where relationships matter.

For a great overview of conversational leadership, see this paper by Hurley and Brown:

http://www.oxfordleadership.com/journal/vol1_issue2/brown_hurley.pdf

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *