Show Notes

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Transcript

Nelis: We are together to discuss an event that happened where we put conversational leadership in practice. I’m excited to be here together with Kate, of course, but also with Clare, Johnstone and Samantha. So, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us! 

We would like to explore what happened in this event to see how conversational leadership works in a large group setting. It’s fresh in our minds and we want to explore different ideas. We want to go through first, maybe about vulnerability, creating containers, creating safe spaces. So, do any of you want to share how you felt that went? How did you experience that? 

Creating safe spaces for conversation

Johnstone: I think I really experienced the fact that the space was quite safe for me to express myself and I say so because you look at different things. First of all, is how the room is arranged, you know, how it’s structured, both the tables that were up front and the tables that were at the back. I like sitting at the back, I came and sat at the back and nobody came and said “Move” or whatever and so I just felt like I was comfortable. And then I looked at the colleagues, that we know each other, and right from the beginning, there was just this, you know, friendly atmosphere that people felt like, yeah, we can talk and laugh and be invited to this big conversation. 

Kate: So even though we were at a work event, it felt like we were amongst friends. I thought it felt very relaxed and comfortable. Did that feel the same way for others? 

Clare: Yes, it certainly did for me. I mean, most of the people in the room I already knew before, but it does make me wonder about the people that didn’t know as many people or maybe didn’t know most of the people there. So how do we keep working on thinking not just of those that were so happy to see each other after not seeing each other for a time but those that may not have.

Kate: Samantha, this was your first time with this particular group of leaders. How was that for you? Did you feel you could participate and speak up? 

Nelis: Actually, just for our audience, Samantha is from a minority background, she was one of the youngest people in the group. So, somewhat different from some of the others. You’ve often felt excluded in other groups. What made you feel at home, because you said, you felt at home. What concretely made you feel at home? 

Samantha: Yes. I was trying to reflect on that because I was pretty intimidated before coming, with the calibre of people that were going to be here and that I didn’t know almost anybody or only had seen their names in the organisational chart maybe. So I wasn’t sure how it would be but I think I was so impressed with the warmth and… when we would have a group conversation, the response, even to different people’s voices. When there were groups, that we were able to choose where to go was helpful. Honestly, I think in the beginning I looked a little bit for groups of people that I might feel more comfortable talking with even above the topic because there were several topics that I’d be interested in and that would end up being my deciding factor because if a space isn’t safe because of who else is there, then that’s that’s not necessarily going to be a very comfortable conversation, even if it’s a topic that you’re really interested in. 

Johnstone: I just wanted to add to that. I felt like the organisers had an intentionality to invite people to a safe space for conversation and to make it known to the participants that really we want this to be a free environment. And then beyond internationality there was some demonstration that that was actually happening. This is the first meeting I’ve been to and I’ve not been assigned a table group! See a lot of times we want to be intentional and say “So and so cannot sit with so and so because they think in a similar way”, or something like that, but here I was told you could just choose any table group, go sit there. You could choose whichever topic you want to talk to and the break time is going to be “fuzzy”. And you know, all those kinds of things that, you know, the leaders, conversation leaders were talking about really created that what I believe is a safe space for me to express myself to the issues that I believe are important. 

Clare: Well, I wonder how this fit in with the process of storytelling, and that, as people began to tell their authentic story and share those and you hear that, it makes you feel freer to tell your perspective and your authentic story for the topics, because some of them were pretty difficult, the topics that we grappled with. And so to me, that’s part of creating that vulnerability, if others model that vulnerability by talking about their personal stories and ups and downs, challenges, I think that helps those that may not feel as comfortable become more comfortable and relaxed. 

Nelis: We talked a little bit about room layout. Maybe for our listeners it’s interesting to hear how we had laid it out. We had a semicircle two-three rows deep where we really sat together like in a 40 people amphitheatre, where we were really talking to each other and I think that worked reasonably well. And then we have nicely decorated tables at the back where somebody had put a lot of effort into actually making it feel like a homey table. And I think those little touches make a difference. Any thoughts about the room layout, what you felt coming in, or thoughts you had? 

Clare: We were blessed with the room, which is light. It has lots of windows. And so, the beauty of the setting was clear. You didn’t feel claustrophobic at all. 

Kate: That’s really important, I think, for open conversations and free-flowing discussions.

Sam: I think too, though it was a big space, dividing the room up in those different sections also made it feel not too big, where you now are like lost in the space, but that you could turn your attention to one space and be in that in one kind of atmosphere and then switch to the tables and be in a different mind space and interactive space. And that allowed that flexibility for different ways of interacting –  different modes almost. And then later when people talked, then they could spread out to different areas.

Johnstone: Somebody has said that we know that there is a lot that can be achieved in Zoom meetings, so what do you do with physical meetings? And I found that comment  very helpful that physical meetings could be an opportunity for greater leadership building, greater ability to just converse as friends and dig deeper into topics, so that you don’t have to feel like, you know, this thing I can only say during break time. You can actually say what you want to say in the room. I think I found that to be helpful as well.

Using stories

Nelis: So people shared their own stories, and we wanted to talk about the storytelling in this event that was done both formally and informally, I think. So, what are your thoughts about how that was done? Maybe Kate, you can describe how we intended to use stories and then see how it was experienced?

Kate: Yes, so we used a couple of stories at the beginning of each of the sessions on the first two days and beforehand, we’d asked everyone coming to submit a story, no longer than a page, about something related to our topic, which was about shifting mental models in our organisation, looking at the mental models that are holding us back from making progress towards our vision. It was fascinating to see all of those coming in and we went through them and selected a few for each session that had some really clear mental models in them that provided a starting place for discussions. Really, we were looking for stories that had generative potential for discussion. And I think that worked really well, but I’d like to hear what the rest of you think about that. 

Clare: I thought that the stories that you chose were really good examples that helped us to think about the issue of mental models. And you know, some challenging, some positive elements, some difficult elements, but I think they really exemplified thinking through the mental model issues that we all have and you intentionally chose a variety of stories that helped us see those things. And not too many of them. Just having eight over those two days was good.

Johnstone: Over time I have realised that I communicate using stories. Stories can give us a lot to learn about certain situations. And so these were things that have happened, so they’re not like just stories that have been imagined. And how do we learn from them? And it was interesting when I was telling my first or even my second story, I could see the emotion in the room. I could see that, you know, when people get to a point of saying “Oh..” or whatever it is, you could feel like the story is communicating. 

Kate: How do you think stories work differently from a presentation? At a lot of our previous events we’ve had presentations with PowerPoints. How did you see stories playing out differently? Because this is something we’re experimenting with, obviously. 

Johnstone: Well, like Claire said, you know, the stories were well chosen beforehand, the ones that we used in the meeting. But I think the stories remove the whole conference from an academic sort of pursuit to something more real, something more natural. It gives us an opportunity to introspect. You know, I once read a story called ‘The Government Inspector’. At the end of it they say, somebody says, “Who are you laughing at? You’re laughing at yourselves.” Stories allow us to do those types of things, to laugh at ourselves, and then to change our course because we can actually see in retrospect, you know, how things can be different.

Kate: They sort of allow us to step outside of ourselves and look at ourselves, or look at the situation from a little bit of a distance don’t they, and you experience it differently from that perspective. 

Clare: They sort of naturally have a sort of a moral to ourselves that you’ve thought about this. And it’s like “Oh…” and it’s not often explicit. It’s usually implicit but because it’s a real story of some things that are really true, it puts the principles in an applied context and I think that really helps people to grapple with the principles in an applied situation. 

Johnstone: I wanted just to add that it was really good for the organisers, to flow with my story without asking me to say more about it. I was giving a real story about a real context, but I didn’t want that place to be shamed, or something like that. And so I chose to omit names of the country, I chose to omit names of people, and I just said the story. You know, after the meeting some people asked… and I still felt, I just think I want that to remain private. You can say the story without really shaming people and that was part of this that really was good.

Kate: That’s really important. And I don’t think it detracted at all from the value of that story that you shared, at all. 

Open Space Technology

Nelis: What we did at the end of those sets of two stories, we then as a group in that semicircle, we talked about – and we had flipcharts – what are the insights we are taking from this and what are the questions that this raises? We didn’t try to answer all the questions. We just raised them and said, what are the questions that we need to wrestle with? I think I was actually quite powerful. I was initially tempted, “Let me try to answer questions”. But no, let us sit with that together and those 20 minutes of looking at insights together as a group is so different from the facilitation team or a synthesis team trying to come to conclusions in a small group. This is all of us wrestling together and I was just amazed how powerfully that worked. Samantha, you were one of the scribes. I mean, we couldn’t keep up with the input that came! 

Samantha: I think that was a wonderful time, also building safety and respect and for me, getting to know different voices without having to talk to each one, you know. In that kind of arena, you start to hear different perspectives and get a feel for who it is that you might want to follow up with later and talk to, who have similar things that they’re thinking about or wrestling with. To have – again – it grounded in the stories that were just told that we have something to start from that is personal and were told from the voices of those who are in those situations, or saw those situations happening in their context, was really powerful for us to be able to then mull over it in a very respectful way. And I think the moderation also helped that. I think the way that you and the other moderator did it was very affirming of everyone’s voices. 

Nelis: I think that’s a key part. You always are affirming, “Yes, this perspective is an insight we need to hear”. 

Kate: So, one of the tools we used during this process was Open Space Technology and, Nelis, you led that part. Would you perhaps describe what we did there?

Clare: That’s a funny term. I’ve never heard that term before. 

Nelis: Yes. I love the term ‘technology’ because it is so low-tech, but Open Space Technology has a whole set of principles behind it, and those who are interested can look that up. We’ll provide the link in the show notes. But we didn’t introduce all of that. We asked people to basically come forward, to put a topic on a piece of paper and then be ready to be part of a group to talk about it. They could come up with any topic, but often it was grounded in the stories we had talked about before. Then we ask people to basically go to the group that they wanted to, it could be two people, it could be 10 people, feel free to move around between groups. And I was a bit nervous, I mean, are we going to get people to come forward? Will the topic be relevant? Will people feel comfortable moving around, but they did. 

Kate: Yes, it really worked. I’ve never seen that tool being used before. 

Johnstone: I just wanted to say, I never knew that whatever you are doing had a name. What I thought we were doing was basically to move from a point of a group having internalised the stories and talked about the insights and questions and we were just going to a space where you pursued what you wanted to pursue, alongside the things that had been discussed. And so I didn’t even know that you guys were using something that is absolutely researched and written. But having said that I just wanted to say that that was a very, very effective way of doing things. 1) I am enthusiastic to discuss something that is so important to me. And so, when people went forward and they picked topics that were important and I had the freedom to choose which group to attend to, I went to places where I felt like, a) I had a contribution or b) that this is an issue that I needed to grapple with. I went there to listen to other people that are grappling with the same issue. But at the same time, I went there to tell them that I have a perspective to offer, you know, and I could be able to do that in a very effective way. And as I just found that to be a very helpful part of this process which we’ve just had this week. 

Samantha: I think there’s also elements of having the vulnerability and creating safe spaces in this as well as because you’re being vulnerable to say, “I’m not controlling what’s happening now, the agenda, and I’m letting the participants take hold and ownership of this as well”. So you would stand there awkwardly in the beginning and that actually gives us a chance as a community also to respond to that vulnerability and to say, you know, “I don’t want the person up front to feel alone”. I will step up and also be brave and contribute something. And then you do know it’s going to be relevant for this group because someone has been vulnerable in saying, “Here’s what I’m interested in. I’d like to talk about that. So would anyone like to join me?”. And then they went vulnerably to sit at a table and invite people into that space. And that was another thing, you could see certain tables would get filled up. The ones that were empty would also be a welcoming space for someone to say “I don’t want those people to feel as alone and I’ll join them”. And so I think that there’s a lot of deep relational aspects to this Open Space Technology.

Johnstone: One of the things that I found intriguing is that… there was a time when I was hosting a conversation. I wrote something on the paper and we had six or so people come to my table. But they all came to approach that topic from a slightly different angle. The good thing is that when we talked about it, how quickly we arrived at the core, the commonality, that was making us want to discuss this. And so one of the things that we did was to really redefine the issue. So we ended up even talking a little bit about the topic and tweaking what I had written, to the level that everybody was now comfortable to make a contribution to that. And when they got comfortable, then they started making a contribution to that, there’s just a lot of gold to mine out of what we were saying. 

Kate: I think we touched on this in one of the previous episodes didn’t we, Nelis? That, sometimes you’ll frame a discussion with what you think is the topic. Then once you get under way, the real issue emerges and it sounds like that was part of the experience for you: that you’d labelled it at one level, but actually, when everyone got talking you realised what the real core issue was. That’s really interesting.

Nelis: I find it interesting that it is so different from predefined questions. So, group processes almost always have a set of three or four questions that you’re supposed to answer and they’re always frustrating, is my experience. Always! And somehow people don’t need the questions. You’ve got a topic and people start to talk and start digging and that free-flowing element actually is so much richer. 

Samantha: I think that the modality of those Open Space technology allows it. I mean, from what I’ve read it’s very intentional that people come with their own question or their own ideas. It’s not like other conversations that are so forced, to say “You have to talk about this topic and you have to talk about it in these ways”. So then that allows people to come with their own input. And it also creates a very natural flat structure where there is no expert necessarily, everyone is the expert in that situation. So there is a little bit more openness.

Nelis: What I found fascinating is no group had an appointed facilitator and you didn’t need one!

Johnstone: You know, we came in from different countries and so time differences were a factor. In many meetings that I have been to, in the afternoon you see people standing, you know, on the walls, fighting sleep. My own observation of this meeting is that it was animated throughout. Nevermind we met from 8 to 6, and that’s a long time to be meeting, to be talking for that matter. But there is some seamless flow that seems to have happened that kept the group so well engaged, you know, throughout this conversation. 

Sense making

Nelis: Let’s move on to our last topic because we’ve had lots of conversation but there is an element of sense-making together. You want to draw things to conclusions. We did that at the end of each day to gather together and say “What are we learning?”. As a Christian organization asking ourselves, “What is God telling us through all this?”. Any thoughts about that sense-making? And the importance of that? And maybe Clare, you’ve got some thoughts about even relating that to urgency. So that this isn’t just talk. 

Clare: Yes, well, one of the things that I was wondering about in this process, since we are focusing on the conversational leadership method of making change—which is particularly useful for complex, adaptive changes—but sometimes even within those, there’s some urgent things that need to be dealt with. Conversational leadership by nature is going to lend itself to gradual emerging solutions. And so it takes time. But within that, there may be some things that if you don’t pay attention to this now you’re not going to have time to finish this conversation because they really are existential threats, for example. So how to balance those two things? I felt like it would be good before we close to help people remember that this is really an important model, but it’s not the only model. You have to be able to discern what kinds of change processes are appropriate for this particular issue you’re dealing with: is it adaptive, is it tactical? What does that mean? 

Samantha: Can you remind me – or I guess maybe reveal to me – which different parts during the days were planned to be the intentional sense-making portions, and maybe describe what those different activities were like.

Nelis: There were smaller and larger parts of that. After each block, we always – after the group conversations – got together asked ourselves “What is emerging?” So that was part of the collective sense-making process. And at the end of each day, we got together in the big semicircle and then really started to dig a bit deeper and I was always giving more time to ask ourselves, “So what are our conclusions? What do we want to sit with and take home?”. So that is also part of that sense-making. And then there’s also an individual sense-making which was planned, that we asked every participant to work on two mental model shifts that they’re going to be held accountable to. That’s very concrete, action-oriented: “What are the steps you can take to address this? And what are you going to work on with your supervisor?” That starts to address that urgency part. There is something that needs to be done at the end. And that was also a planned sense-making part. 

Johnstone: You know, personally, my perspective has been, you know, some of the mental models, we were talking about are things that I have grappled with over time, and I could easily see the group sense-making process. I struggled a bit with the personal sense-making process. The group sense-making processes, yes, these are things that we need to be talking about as a group. These are things that we need to dig in and we need to get to some conclusions about some of these things. But then I think when that was mixed by outside perspective – somebody came and clearly offered a presentation. And I must say that he had been listening to us throughout the week and he was very intentional in doing so. I believe that his presentation really responded so well to some of the things that we were trying to grapple with. All of a sudden I just felt like being ripped apart and just getting deep into things that personally apply to me. It was at that point for me in the conference that I started saying “Yeah, stop thinking about others out there. And think about what are you going to do about these things?” And that was very, very powerful for me. 

Nelis: We talk about disruption in our podcast often. You need new insights from somebody outside the system often, to create novelty, and I think that outside voice of somebody who’s in a different organisation can be very powerful and it was.

Kate: Definitely, so the first two days we were sharing our own stories, we were a little bit introspective in a sense, but I think the stories helped us to dig down and unpack what are these unhelpful mental models that we need to address as an organisation. And then, the third day, we had our external speaker come and talk on a topic that had actually emerged as a major topic from our previous two days. 

Nelis: We didn’t know that!

Kate: We actually didn’t know that that topic would emerge so strongly through those first two days when we invited him, but actually he was able to bring novelty into the discussion and from outside, from his own experience, from his academic research, and his own organisation. And I think that worked really, really well, and we can’t take the credit for organising that, it just happened. 

Clare: Well, for me, what I found that gave us such a way to grapple with it is that he started with a lot of stories, personal stories, his own experience, very vulnerable. And so these very topics that we were grappling with, he modelled. I don’t think you told him that’s the way you should present but he used the very powerful thing of helping us to see his own personal journey, as well as some insights from his experiences and his journey as a leader that really brought a lot of insight. 

Kate: Now, what’s interesting is that he and I were on the same Masters study program where we both encountered conversational leadership a couple of years back. We’ve both been experimenting and talking about that since. So I think he was already coming from that perspective that stories, narratives, that’s what changes things. That’s what seeds change.

Johnstone: Another thing that I believe that led to concretisation of thoughts is the self correction that I saw happen in the room. So somebody would give a story and then there would be that time for responses. At some point, there is a story that was given around a certain mental model and the way the room responded to the story, you didn’t need a leader to be the one saying “This is wrong”, this needs to be done differently. As peers of that person, we were able to sort of bring light and our own contribution to that. And sense-making happens at that particular point, because sometimes you feel like “I’m in this part of the world. I am so unique. There are no other people that have my situation”, but you come and bring it to such a diverse group and then people just start telling you how these things could be and that can be very powerful. 

Samantha: Yeah. I was thinking, maybe you said it in the very beginning, about this conversational model, is how it was like a flock of birds moving, I was thinking about how that is. It’s like when you study these flocks of birds, they don’t have some lead, like lead-bird. Flocks that move in that way, they all kind of draft next to each other,  they calibrate according to what birds are around them. So, I think in that we found a way of overlapping with each other, complementing each other, taking our own, internal convictions and personal insights and tuning them to each other, attuning to each other. So we were able to adjust to one another and therefore start to really have a sense of collaboration and unity that I think  by yesterday morning, when we had that really incredible session there was such a sense that we were hearing from each other. And again, for our faith, that we had a sense that God was speaking to us in a unified way, that we could hear, a voice that we could hear and it was, it was drawing us in a certain direction. 

Clare: To me, what was interesting is the topics that ended up being in focus in his discussion with us were really difficult topics, really painful topics, things that are difficult to change. Heart level change is needed. And those tend to be ones which become divisive in other processes. People stake their perspective because they feel maybe accused or they feel “Now you just don’t understand”, and become defensive. Whereas I didn’t sense that at all in these difficult topics. I’m sure that there are people at various levels of struggling, but in terms of how we process those things together, I think there was a real openness to say, “We all have something to learn here”.

Johnstone: I feel like this week has been like a journey. I can compare it to a journey. And in a journey we have people who can drive, walk or run faster than others. And as we started exploring stories, I feel like there are people who, you know, got there earlier. First day they would feel like “This is my mental model, this is what I want to work on. And they were starting to make conclusions for themselves. Other people arrived there the second day. Some people like me arrived on the third day. But the important thing is that the whole room arrived by yesterday and that is very, very important. I don’t know whether this is something that you can orchestrate or whether in planning and doing stuff you also have to trust God, to use the resources that you have to his own glory. Because I just think that I have seen such huge impact and huge transformation in our attitudes, in our thoughts, and as you speak to different people, people can say, “You know, I never put a name to this. Now I have a name to it”. You know, I’ve had a lot of testimonies that have been coming out of this meeting, and I’m just wondering, you know, it’s a journey, different people arriving there at different times, but definitely seeing the hand of God, as well, in what was happening here this week. 

Nelis: Thank you. I think we need to come to a conclusion. 

Kate: It’s been great to hear your experiences. We need our listeners to know that we didn’t pay them to say these nice things, that we didn’t prime them in any way or prepare them, they just shared from the heart. We’re very grateful to Clare and Johnstone and Samantha for giving us this time. Thank you.

Nelis: And I’d like to invite our listeners to join the conversation as well. Feel free to put your comments in the website and let’s journey together.

Kate: Thank you for listening.