Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leading in Conversation! Today we thought we’d do something a little bit different and answer some questions. As we’ve been doing quite a lot of talking and presenting recently in our organisation about conversational leadership at a couple of different events and as more people have been listening to our podcast, we’re collecting quite a few excellent questions and we thought we’d just take some time to tackle them today.
Nelis: I wish we had the people themselves asking it, and that we truly had a conversation and not just the sterile conversation between the two of us, but it’ll have to do!
Kate: Absolutely. That would be way more fun wouldn’t it? We really enjoy it when people join us. But today, it’s just us. Bit boring, hey? Okay, so Nelis, are you ready for the first question?
Nelis: Let’s try it!
Kate: Is conversational leadership just another tool in a leaders toolbox or is it more than that?
Nelis: It’s definitely more than that. It is a tool. It’s actually a very useful tool, but it goes way beyond that. It is really about understanding how organisations work: this idea that an organisation is a network of conversations and how change actually happens. It is embracing the idea that the conversation triggers the change, and the conversation in many ways is the change. It really contrasts the organisation as a machine that you need to tinker with and that is how traditionally organisations have been seen. And so, if you really embrace this idea of organisations as networks of people who relate to each other, that’s where decisions are being made in context, and conversational leadership is about joining that but triggering those new ideas, etc.
Kate: Yes. I like to pair conversational leadership with co-creational. Conversational and co-creational leadership because I think therein is the difference. It’s not just about talking, it’s not about pulling out a participatory methods tool. It’s not just saying, “Well, now we’re going to be conversational about this and talk more”. It’s actually about bringing more people into discussion, into a space where you need some direction, to co-create a solution together. And it’s operating with that mindset all the time.
Nelis: Which is exactly quite a challenge because then broadening the network of decision-makers and assuming that decisions are going to be made at every level of the organisation, that’s what conversational leadership is about. But that’s also something that takes time, and it’s hard to maintain. That’s why we keep talking about it.
Kate: And as we always say, we’re not experts, we’re still figuring this out as we go. Definitely. Okay, next question.
Nelis. So Kate, after talking about what it really is, the question then comes up, and somebody asked us that, what is actually new about this? What is new about conversational leadership compared to other approaches?
Kate: That’s a good question. I think for me, one of the biggest things is that the focus in conversational leadership is not on leaders, ironically. It’s on the wisdom of all. Conversational leadership fits into that paradigm of post-heroic leadership. It’s not just about a leader isolated, making the decision even with a small group of other leaders at the top, but it’s… the word is heterarchical, not hierarchical. You want to get as many people as possible and leaders and consultants are part of the process, not standing outside it, acting on the organisation, you know, as you said as a machine.
Nelis: So let me add to that, and I’ve said this before, it’s kind of my hobby horse, but what I think is key to it is also that it really embraces the emergent nature of change. It really embraces this idea that organisations are always in movement and that setting a vision from the top doesn’t work because it’s always fluid. It embraces that fluidity and uses it actually as something really powerful, by having more people involved in the whole decision-making process, by freeing people up to make their own decisions and to look for novelty, and to leverage that.
Kate: Yes, so instead of imposing a decision about where we are going in a process, you know, leaders imposing a decision: “This is what we’re aiming for, everyone”, it’s like, “What’s the problem? Where do we want to go?”, getting people together, getting the diversity in the room, creating conditions for novelty to emerge in conversation.
Nelis: Yes, and really, being okay with the idea that there is not one right answer or that the right answer for now, may not be the right answer in the future. Even a lot of facilitated processes have in the past been or continue to often focus on getting the right answer, getting the best answer. Well, conversational leadership assumes that there is no best answer. There are lots of answers and some work better than others and what works well now may not work well tomorrow. And it’s that constant going-with-the flow of working it out in community.
Kate: In fact, just yesterday, I was meeting with my team leaders and we’re doing our FY23 planning and really trying to wrestle with, you know, what does this look like – emergent planning, doing this conversationally, in an emergent way, because you know, we made plans for the last couple of years and many of them didn’t happen because of Covid. So how therefore do we now plan for the next year not knowing what will happen, but being okay with that. I think we’re all becoming a little bit more comfortable with that emergent planning. We’ll start some things and see what happens, see what emerges. And I think that’s quite new. I think that still takes a lot of getting used to.
Nelis: Yes, and that creates resistance as well. Although some of this and I think it’s good to point out. This is not the unique domain of conversational leadership. The idea that you quickly change, the fact that you bring in more people. All of these things are not in that sense unique. But I think conversational leadership brings those elements together in a coherent way of thinking that combines things in new ways.
Kate: So, another question we’ve had, Nelis, is: what do you think makes a particular method conversational or not conversational? I like this one.
Nelis: Yes, I like that too. It’s a difficult question because there are so many different tools out there that use conversation. It’s not black and white, let me put it that way. There are a lot of methods that use conversation and you could call those conversational, you wouldn’t be wrong, but I think what really is key for something to be truly conversational, is that it pools the wisdom from the whole group and doesn’t assume an answer ahead of time. That it doesn’t try to push the group into a certain direction, but that it’s truly coming in without a predefined answer. And too often I’ve seen facilitated processes that are trying to get a group to buy in. And what makes a method truly conversational, is when the answer is completely unknown going into it. You may have a suspicion of what might come out, but you just don’t know and you’re totally okay with that. And I think that is a key element in a method truly being conversational.
Kate: Is there something also about the nature of the conversation?
Nelis: I think there is. So, let’s explore that together.
Kate: Yes, I mean, so with my team yesterday, I was leading a conversation about, a discussion about what are our big picture priorities going to be for our overall unit for the next three years. It’s something about the quality of conversation, something about keeping the conversation free-flowing, helping people to make associations. So as the facilitator, the leader in that situation, I was very much trying to hold back, to listen, to make connections but not impose anything, any sense making too prematurely. And actually as a leader it felt a little bit sort of random and chaotic to me but by the time we got to the end, everyone was like, “Wow that was a really significant conversation, that was so rich” and I was just like “Oh but I need some things, some words, to put in the plan!”. We’re not there yet. It was just a brainstorm. But there’s a piece there about the quality, the flow, the sense-making in a conversational process, compared to non-conversational.
NElis: Yes, and I think that is really helpful but there’s another element in the nature of the conversation that it is focused on finding answers together. So it’s not just a random conversation between friends. A conversational leadership conversation has to be focused on moving the organisation of the group further into a decision, into a new product, into new developments, into new understandings. It’s not a random conversation.
Kate: There’s definitely an element of discernment in there. And actually, what we did at the end of yesterday’s meeting was said, “Okay, press pause on this. Let’s all go away, let’s reflect. Let’s see what else comes, make notes on this between now and our next meeting”. And then we’ll pick it up again and then try to do some synthesis or sense-making. But really being open to what is developing, what is emerging. And trying to pin that down at a certain point, but not too soon. Which actually leads us on to another question. You can try this one. How do decisions get made in a conversational leadership approach?
Nelis: Yes, we often get asked this because there’s this fear that you get bogged down and no decisions get made or it gets way too slow. So how decisions get made is really important. And I think it is a key part of leadership to hold the group accountable for decision-making at some point. You can do that in some kind of predetermined but flexible time frame, by you saying, “We’ve got to come to a decision at this point.” And you can say, “Okay, we’re not there yet. We need a little bit more time”. But it’s not endlessly flexible. So I think that is the role of leadership to either let the consensus emerge and basically say, “Okay, I think we’ve got a decision”.
Kate: “Does that resonate with you? Are you hearing what I’m saying?” Etc. So that the leader does kind of step in, or the facilitator steps in, and has a sensemaking role – to pull things out and say, “Well, this is what I’m hearing, is this correct?”
Nelis: Or even when it is still quite divergent and you need to come to a decision, to propose something and say “For now I propose that we go with this, hold this lightly, revisit it if it turns out to be wrong, but is everyone okay, moving ahead with this in the meantime?” And I think that is an important aspect where you don’t impose it but you give it as a best answer for now that we can arrive at.
Kate: Yes, another thing that we came across when we were reading about dialogic processes was this idea of the conversation leading to what they call “probes”. Which is a kind of decision-making. Say you gather together as a team and you’ve got a problem and you want to find different solutions. At the end of a conversation process, you might say, “Well, here’s a couple of things we’re going to try”. As a leader you give permission, you give budget, you open up gateways for people to then experiment with those probes. And that’s a form of decision-making. It’s an emergent way. “Let’s try this out and see a pilot project. Let’s keep going down this road a little bit and see if this leads somewhere”.
Nelis: And to me that has all to do with this embrace of emergence. We don’t know what the right answer is, but we’ve got to move forward with something and some things will work out, may work out for now, but not forever. And you constantly readjust. And so probes, tentative plans, tentative decisions are, I think, absolutely essential. It creates freedom for people to participate and to try things out, which I think we don’t do often enough
Kate: And it may not be the perfect decision. I think the critical thing is that it’s a good enough decision. This is something I came up against in my research, coming from Ralph Stacey and colleagues, this sense of “good enough”. You know, often, we’re in our strategic planning, we’re just trying to pin everything down and get everything just right. This really resonated with me because so much of the time we can’t know what the future is going to hold. And I think as leaders it’s hard to embrace that “not knowing” and sometimes we just need to settle for a good enough decision, not a perfect one. And then time and practice reveals whether that was the right decision or not, and you make adjustments. And that obviously takes humility to be willing to adjust and actually admit that wasn’t the right decision, but here’s what we’ve learned in the process.
Nelis: And again, this is not unique – it’s good to keep pointing that out – to conversational leadership. I’m right now reading a book by Carla Johnson about Innovation. One of her things is there is not this one thing that will be “The Innovation”. You should come with 30 different ideas in your pocket. There are hundreds of them out there that could work. It’s just finding them. And she has this method for finding them, which is very much also, one of the methods is crowdsourced. And so, just pointing out that there are overlaps with other ideas in current management literature.
Kate: Things like this don’t come from nowhere, they develop because of the sea change in society or because of a change in our access to information or our ability to connect. We can do crowdsourcing now, we can do participatory things in a way that we couldn’t do previously because we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t have Zoom, etc. Or even getting everyone in the room, in the same room at the same time. Did we answer the question then? “How do decisions get made in a conversational leadership approach?”. I think we did.And “Collectively” is probably a one-word answer. How do decisions get made? “Together!”
Nelis: Collectively, tentatively. And holding it lightly. Yes.
Nelis: Another question that has come up is that we have used – in our organisation – participatory methods quite a lot already. So what does it actually add when you talk about conversational leadership?
Kate: Yes, good question, actually. So, yes in SIL – because of the nature of our work with communities – we have already used participatory methods a lot. We have a lot of people who are very well trained in how to do this. And is conversational leadership something new? In a sense, no. I think they share a philosophical basis in social constructionism, that together we create reality, we create understanding, we create meaning, as well as some of the principles that, you know, listening is very important. The quality of the conversation is very important. The power of language, narrative, stories, etc. I’d say that there are lots of participatory tools that you can use to facilitate conversations. And we’ve certainly used some of them. I think we’ve talked in the past about World Cafe, Focused Conversation, Appreciative Inquiry, others like that. And the Bushe and Marshak book that I have added onto our resources page, has a long list of different participatory methods that can be used. And you can Google that if that’s new to you
Nelis: What I think is also new in the way we’ve approached this recently is to take the facilitator more out of the central role. A lot of participatory methods are very facilitation heavy and the facilitator has everything sorted out ahead of time. It’s like a hub-and-spoke. So the facilitator is the hub. Everything flows through that facilitator. Whereas, I believe that what we’re seeing in truly conversational leadership is the role of the facilitator is much less pronounced. We’ve called it the host. It’s the idea that leadership flows to different parts of the organisation, different people and it doesn’t have to be all neatly methodical and sorted out ahead of time. I think that that is a key part of conversational leadership that in traditional participatory methods is less in focus.
Kate: And of course, we may be completely misrepresenting participatory methods here. So if you are a practitioner please write and let us know.
Kate: Okay, here’s a bit of a fun one to end on then. Is conversational leadership just for extroverts and people who like talking? I love this! We are both extroverts, verbal processors, and we like talking. So we may be a little bit biased here. What do you think, Nelis?
Nelis: I wonder if introverts wouldn’t actually be better at it? Because yes, extroverts love talking, but I think the key thing in conversational leadership is the listening part. And listening is so absolutely essential. I think a lot of introverts have this to contribute, that they listen well. They get all the different viewpoints, they don’t come in with their ideas already sorted out ready to roll. The pitfall for an extrovert is that you’re wanting to jump in and guide it and bring your wonderful idea out there. And actually that’s not what it’s about at all. So I’m not sure that it’s just for extroverts actually, because they [introverts] may be more qualified.
Kate: Yes, I agree. I think it’s not about quantity of talking either – which we may be guilty of – but quality of conversation. It’s an important distinction there. So no, it’s not just for extroverts or some people who like conversation but it’s probably a little bit easier for us.
Nelis: So again, love to hear comments and responses from people who are introverts and who have participated in those kinds of processes and share your thoughts.
Kate: A final question which we’re not actually going to answer now is one that does come up a lot. It comes up so much that we’re actually going to devote a whole podcast episode and invite some friends and colleagues to join us for this one. This is, how does conversational leadership work in different cultural settings? We’ll be setting up another podcast and look out for that one. It’s a critical question, as many of us work in multicultural environments with people from different cultures. How do we make it work across cultures when some people are more culturally inclined to speak up first and voice their own opinions and speak as individuals, and others will hold back, are thinking about how to honour and respect others in the room, they’re aware of things like age and seniority, hierarchy. And also for leaders in some cultures, where leaders are really thought to be weak if they don’t have the answer already on the tip of their tongues. How do you use conversational leadership in that kind of environment without looking weak?
Nelis: Great, Kate, that is a wonderful cliffhanger for a future episode. This is like an episode in a series…
Kate: Tune in for the answers…
Nelis: Exactly, but we’re hoping to do that in a way that we as two westerners are not going to provide the answers. We need to do this in dialogue with actually people from those cultures otherwise we’re falling into the trap of answering for others, and I don’t think we should do that.
We’re looking forward to seeing you next time on Leading in Conversation. It’s fun to be with you all!