Rev Dr Rob Hay joins us to discuss organisations as conversations, the relationship between toxic leadership and not knowing, and why we all need to pay attention to how well we pay attention.

A conversation with Dano Perryman, about powerful questions, coaching, anxiety and change.

Anthony and Heline share about fireside chats, clan meetings and how a conversational process is like a big pot of African soup. Join us as we debrief a recent event and learn about the thinking behind the adaptations they made to participatory tools to better suit the cultural context along with their great insights about conversational leadership.

In this episode we talk with Andreas Ernst about the role of conversation in community development projects in Cameroon.

In this episode we explore the topic of leading in chaos, using Ralph Stacey’s leadership matrix as a starting point. How do you lead when you are far from agreement and far from certainty? How can we prepare ourselves and our teams to survive times of chaos, which are becoming more frequent than we would like?

Conversation with Peter van Dingenen, a medical doctor who recounts his experiences working in community health in Burkina Faso, where he learned to use conversational leadership, without knowing it even had a name. Peter talks about building latrines in Burkina Faso, involving High School students in village clinics, and training nurses in Germany and how all need to be done in a way that centres people in the process.

Kate talks with Josiah Watters about creating open conversations, unconferences and maintaining balance with other methods. They explore how do you embrace not knowing in leadership, how to model a learning attitude and how conversation and action relate to each other. Finally how does all of this work in the virtual space?

End of Season 1: Review of the journey so far, what we are learning, and what comes next when we return with Season 2 in April.

A conversation with Meera and Albert about their experiences of conversational leadership in their journey as Asian leaders – The importance of meals, relationship building and being able to say “I don’t know” – Growing a workplace culture where staff don’t always need to come to the leader for direction – Albert’s 3 Cs: competence, care and co-working – Returning full circle to community storytelling and critical thinking of the pre-colonial era.

Interview with Jason Griffiths: his journey into CL – Contrasting CL with traditional and hierarchical leadership – CL as a methodology to improve the quality of decision-making – Using CL in reporting processes, consulting with staff – Conflict situations and discernment through conversation – The challenges of CL.

– Is conversational leadership (CL) just another tool in a leaders’ toolbox? – What’s new about CL compared to other approaches? – What do you think makes a particular method conversational or not conversational? – How do decisions get made? – How is CL different to participatory methods? – Is conversational leadership just for extroverts

A conversation with Reinhold Titus about conversational leadership, culture and inclusion: His motivation for using conversational leadership – Getting started, passing on the vision, and some of the challenges – The dynamics of language, gender, age, and power.

A conversation with Johnstone Ndunde, Claire O’Leary and Samantha Deck. We explore conversational leadership in a conference setting and how it works in practice to: – Create safe spaces for conversation – Use stories – Work with Open Space Technology – Do sense making together

three underlying processes for conversational leadership: – disruption and emergence. Disruption needs to be based on an understanding of complexity in organisations – the power of narratives: narratives guide all of us. How we can change the narrative? – Generative images. What is a generative image and how can you create one

Different uses of Conversational Leadership, both for change processes and daily leadership; The basics of a process – whether day-to-day or big event/ process: – Framing the issue, – Inviting people to join conversation, – Creating a safe space (“containers”) , – Creating structure – tools for hosting a conversation, – Making space for spontaneous interactions, – Staying in the groan zone long enough, – Coming to conclusions

Introduction to Nelis van den Berg and Kate King What is conversational leadership? Six principles of conversational leadership: – An organisation is a web of ongoing conversations – Everyone in the organisation has wisdom that is needed – Leaders have an important but different role to play – Diversity is needed – Talk IS action – Conversational leadership opens up space beyond the rational