Welcome!
We are Kate King and Nelis van den Berg. Leading in conversation is our passion and our vision. We’re excited about the transformative power of free-flowing conversations that generate new insights and open up possibilities for change.
As we’ve experimented with conversational leadership and seen it transform how we work in our organisation, we’ve found that it resonates with other leaders and they want to know more. This podcast is our response to that growing interest. Together, and with guests, we set out to explore how conversational leadership works on a daily basis in the workplace. We are practitioners, not experts: please join the conversation and learn along with us!
Kate comes from the UK and has degrees in languages and leadership. She has always been passionate about people and the power of language to connect and change us. She’s worked in communications, event design and facilitation and in leadership roles, in the UK, Papua New Guinea and globally.
As Director of Community and Culture in a global non-profit, Kate found her dream job: overseeing community life, internal communications and change conversations in an organisation of over 4000 staff. She loves nothing more than to get people connected and sharing their experiences and wisdom in a variety of spaces, both online and face-to-face.
After witnessing a number of failed change processes, Kate came across conversational leadership and dialogic organisation development during her Masters research. She quickly became convinced that this was an approach to change that could actually work and started experimenting on and with her colleagues, including Nelis.
Nelis comes from the Netherlands and has a Masters in Educational Psychology. He started out working Cameroon, developing educational materials with an indigenous community, moved into training and partnership roles and then through a variety of leadership roles in the Netherlands, Cameroon, Francophone Africa, and now globally.
After a decade as Associate Executive Director and now as Director of Change Management, Nelis enjoys unleashing the passion of people, seeking a common vision, and empowering meaningful conversations.
As part of a global leadership team, working with Kate and others on finding new ways to lead, Nelis found in conversational leadership a new way of looking at what organisations are all about and how change works.
Together we are now seeking to share our experience with others through a book on conversational and co-creational leadership (hoping to publish in 2026) and by offering consultant support to NGO and non-profit leaders who want to bring meaningful change in their organisations using a conversational and co-creational approach. Contact us at info@leadinginconversation.net if you are interested in working with us.
The views and opinions expressed on this site are ours alone and do not represent the organisation we work for.