Show notes
Barry Oshry, Seeing Systems
Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leading in Conversation. We’re really excited today to have another guest with us, a colleague of ours, Jason Griffiths. Thanks for coming along, Jason.
Jason: It’s great to join you Kate, thanks for inviting me.
Nelis: Jason, why don’t you start off with sharing a little bit of your background and why you’re interested in conversational leadership?
Jason: Thanks Nelis. Yeah, it’s been an interest I’ve had for a while, but it wasn’t until around 2018 that I was able to put a term on it, as I began to learn about conversational leadership. But prior to that, it was really an interest in allowing people to talk to one another. And I had this idea about teams, that a really important approach was that teams could work together, talking to one another to enable them to make good decisions and that teams should talk to other teams in the organisation. And that way we have better outcomes, better decisions, we can hear one another, things like that. So I was thinking in terms of teams. So it wasn’t until 2018 I heard the term conversational leadership and I thought “Wow! This is a term that captures the kinds of things I’ve been trying to do”.
Nelis: Is that for you just another term or does it actually shape your thinking?
Jason: Yeah, definitely, as I heard the term it really did help to shape the kind of initial aha moment, “Oh, this is a term to use for what I’ve been trying to achieve”. And then it begins to sharpen it to say, “Yeah, so what does a conversational way of leading actually look like in practice?” and I began to experiment more in that space.
Kate: What are some of the values in conversational leadership that appeal to you? What is it particularly that grabs you, resonates with you?
Jason: Yeah, I think that it’s this idea that you take time to hear each other. So you’re valuing other people, being able to set a space to hear other people. Also this idea that we actually co-create together in ways that we couldn’t imagine on our own. The added value of other people’s input just increases all the different nodes, adding in and we can increase all the possibilities from there. So that’s pretty exciting, that we’re not only doing something that helps people to feel valued but we’re doing something that actually makes our result better as well.
Kate: Absolutely. And we should add at this point, we didn’t give any introduction to Jason other than his name! Jason has been a senior leader in our organisation for many years, at the country level and now he oversees one of our global regions. How do you see conversational leadership contrasting with traditional models of leadership?
Jason: I guess it depends on your perception. You might be able to tell from my accent, but being Australian we’re fairly egalitarian, maybe like many others, you and others listening. So this idea of people being on the same level and sharing together is a cultural value that I grew up in as well. Finding ways of leadership that bring that kind of “we do it together” value has always been something I’ve tried to do. It’s part of how I’ve done leadership in the past, and so working in a way that kind of creates teams, because that way you’re bringing people together to lead together, that was very appealing to me. So that’s in each leadership situation I found myself in, the idea of inviting others to join a team, to do it together, was always really appealing. And so that led to, “So how do we do this kind of conversation as a team, how do we then talk to other teams that might be linked to ours?” and, so yeah, it’s part of the process. So I think the, the kind of leadership style where a leader might be expected to have all the answers or to have the right knowledge or skill set or the right whatever, to be able to meet all the needs that there are in leadership is just a fallacy, and so being able to access knowledge from people around us that are working in different contexts and have various realities that they’ve lived through, to be able to say “What do you think about this, and how does this situation look to you?” and give their insights, that’s just a much better way to do leadership. And that’s what conversational leadership can bring.
Nelis: It’s interesting, you say that culturally for you this is a really good match, but you’ve also led in much more hierarchical cultural contexts, both colleagues who are from a hierarchical culture or an overall environment where it’s different. How have you seen that play out in cross-cultural settings where the expectation is actually very different?
Jason: That’s a good question. I think in various cultures it will look quite different. I’ve found that conversation seems to be a common element. People talk to each other. They do it in different ways. So I think in a very hierarchical culture you probably wouldn’t find the boardroom where executives sit and decisions are being made, that’s less likely to be the place where there is free-flowing co-sharing, meaning-making conversation happening. In a hierarchical context that might not be it. But the conversations happen. It’s possible that they may happen a few days before or a few hours before, where people are having all these conversations to make meaning together, so that the decisions that come in that boardroom context would be the right decisions. And so I think they still happen, the conversations still take place. It’s just the process, the table setting, if you like, for how you invite those conversations might look a bit different in an egalitarian context versus a very hierarchical one.
Nelis: You talked about this interest of yours. It’s actually become so concrete you said that you want to do some research and writing about that. Can you share a bit more about that?
Jason: Part of my Masters research that I did a couple of years ago, finished a couple of years ago, found that in many contexts in which I was doing research, people wanted to get together, they wanted to have their voices heard, they wanted to have ways of participating in creating the decisions that are made. It was just really interesting to see how people expressed that in their own words. And so that was another reason that I thought, I’ve been experiencing anyway. I didn’t ask people in the research about conversational leadership, that wasn’t the focus of that research but it came out from what people said… not the terminology, but the experience of wanting to make meaning together and to be heard and valued for what they had to share from their lived experience. And I thought, “Wow this is quite strong in what people want to do and share in an organisation”. So I was thinking more about that, what would I do next leading from that, and conversational leadership is getting sharper in our organisation, we’re talking more about it and we’re trying to practise it more and so I began thinking about doing a PhD in this area of conversational leadership. And so something in the area of conversational leadership as an effective methodology to increase the quality of leadership decisions. That space, of how do we use this to enable things to be better for all stakeholders, for the staff, for other stakeholders outside, for leaders, how could conversational leadership be a tool to make it better? So, yeah, I’m just in the process of starting that journey at the moment.
Kate: Really interesting subject there for your PhD, especially as one of the critiques of conversational leadership from people is, “It’s just talk. When do we actually make a decision?”. So I love that you’re planning to look at how we can use it to improve our decision-making. Can you share a little bit about your thoughts there?
Jason: Yes, I think this very thing of, how do we make conversational leadership into something that actually is shaping and is moving somewhere is a critique that I’ve heard too. That people are like, “Well you can just talk and talk and that’s fine, but is that really a way of doing leadership? Is that really a way of actually moving us somewhere?”. That’s why I chose this particular area of research because I think there are ways that we can work on that. I’d love to be able to have some data to say actually, here’s some ideas and here’s some basis from research that says yes, it’s an effective way of actually doing leadership better. It’s more, a quality outcome can arise from conversational leadership.
Nelis: I loved your earlier comment, Jason, where you said “making meaning together”. I think that’s what you said, and I’m just taken by that comment because that is, I think, the core of what conversational leadership is about in many ways, in a very pithy way. Have you seen that happen in practice? So, you talk about that desire that in your Master’s research came out. Have you seen that happening in practice? That meaning-making together?
Jason: One of the ways I’ve seen meaning-making happen together is in the Area in which I worked. The various department heads, I would in the past ask for reports to be sent in, it might be a regular report about activity, measuring something, indicators. In the past it would be a report I’d ask for, might be a one or two-page report. And you get the data of what’s going on. But more recently, I’ve been asking for a conversation around those with each of the department heads and sometimes part of their team. And so each time there’s a reporting cycle, we’ve not only received, we do receive a written report, but it’s quite brief, and then by inviting a conversation and setting up a series of conversations with different department heads and their teams, you really begin to get not only why the data’s there, but what’s behind the data, the value behind that as well. And you can kind of share together, on “”hy did you report that? And what do you think happened to lead to that going on?”. And you’re kind of creating understanding together. And both the department and myself, we’re learning, we’re both learning something, both able to contribute, it’s so much more meaningful than just receiving a piece of paper and going, “Oh, that’s, that looks good.” You could write a half page response but you’re still not really getting to what’s behind that. And how can we understand that in an even greater extent through the conversation of exchanging ideas. That’s one way of something going from the very almost, one directional space of just a report being submitted, to allowing it to be a starting place, to create a whole nother level of meaning, which happens together.
Kate: Yes, we’ve often talked about the generative elements of conversational leadership before. It opens up space to go in new directions, whereas a report would be a very static thing: “Here’s what’s happened”. Perhaps, “Here’s why”. When you have a conversation together, you know, as you say you can dig deeper and look at why things happen, but also you can spark off, novelty, new thoughts, new directions. And it becomes a whole different experience with a lot more generative energy in it. I love that. That’s really exciting to hear.
Jason: Yeah, I’ve found it’s both more interesting for the participants and it does generate these new ideas just as you described. And so you go away going, “Huh, there’s new things we can do just because we had that conversation”. They might not have percolated without having this catalyst of a conversation about it, to actually create these new ideas.
Kate: And you might not have arrived at the end of that meeting with definite decisions or action items, but there’s those things percolating which will then go on to make a difference and lead to new things. And it’s that tension, isn’t it, we’ve talked about before, between making a decision and saying, “This is the way we’re going to go”, and leaving space for things to grow, that are in effect a decision. You take a step in a certain direction because of the conversation and that in itself is a decision. It’s just not a decision that we write on paper and highlight and, you know, share with others or write a memo about, but it’s still a decision. And, as I said, looking forward to hearing more about your research in this area.
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Nelis: It sounds that it also changes the dynamic of your relationship with the people you report to. It’s less, they are reporting to you to accomplish the goals that you have set. And it’s more, setting goals together, bi-directional empowering. Is that correct?
Jason: That’s right. I think so. I guess it’s going back to this idea of novelty, that new ideas come up that might end up in the report and then in future conversations – because they were generated here at this point – there’s a certain way of novelty coming out of the conversation, new ideas spring up, and they become then included in future conversations. So it’s, it can become greater and like more and more happens, more and more comes out of a conversation, with lots of threads that come out. Now some of those will continue on, be stronger, other ones, they might not be the things that have the energy in them and they maybe, laid down, laid aside, and that’s okay.
Nelis: You once told me, Jason, about a staff conference that was planned as a big formal event and that for some reason was not possible, I think it had to do with Covid. Then as a result, you ended up with lots of informal meetings. Can you tell more about that? Because you shared that that was actually quite powerful and that might have even been more effective than the formal conference ever could have been. So, can you share about what happened? And how you see that as an illustration of conversational leadership?
Jason: So, this little thing called Covid… There was a planned conference of all of the department and quite a lot of people involved. And I travelled to that location. And then it was all looking good. We’d set up all these ways of having a large group conversation with the whole department. And then rules changed, as we are all familiar with that process of, you plan something, then the rules changed. And the gathering size decreased and actually, stepped down over a couple of days. It ended up being you could only meet in quite a small group. And so just thinking, “Oh, wow, what do you do in a situation like this when you have all these really creative conversations with large groups planned and then it just isn’t possible?”. And so we kind of switched and said, “Well, the people are here. The people are gathered in some form. They can’t all be in one space altogether, but people are around. Could we have just very small conversations instead, the same kind of topics, thinking about change, thinking about what’s next, thinking about goals. Things like that. Can we have those same conversations but just in very much smaller groups and do it in lots of different iterations?”. And so we did that and it was interesting because each time we had just a small group conversation in this iterative process, we would learn that… there’s a little group, I think it was only two of us that went from from small group to small group, kind of bringing some of the learning from one group to the next group and learning about the process as we did it. And so changing slightly because it was this two-way conversation. Not only were we asking questions and receiving responses, but we’re both learning together, all the participants learning together.
Kate: Sounds a bit like a World Cafe, but done not simultaneously, but done sequentially. And in fact, if you’re taking what you’re hearing from one group on to the next. Interesting.
Jason: Yeah. We weren’t taking everything. We were letting each group discover for themselves. But we were taking some of the process learnings like, “Oh, we wouldn’t do that again”. “That’s not a good way to elicit questions or to get good responses”. And then redefining some of the things we were doing because we learnt that that’s not a good way to engage people. So it was a little bit like that, we were bringing some of the learnings, certainly the process learnings, to each group, but in the end it was a much, probably a more powerful experience of learning together than it would have been had it been the large group that we had originally planned. So that was a really interesting learning, that these small conversations could be as effective as a large conversation that we might hope for.
Kate: Yeah. If you think about that, people’s level of engagement in small groups is much more focused. In a big group you can kind of switch off – especially when it’s a couple of hundred people – you switch off and just let the usual people speak. Whereas if you’re in smaller groups, you feel more inclined to speak up, it’s not quite so nerve wracking to speak in a small group than if you’re standing up at a microphone. That’s really interesting. And that releases a whole different level of discussion and thinking and creativity.
Jason: Yeah, a lot more intimate conversation because you’re in these quite small groups and you can share more deeply from your own lived experience. And so I think much more meaningful all around really.
Nelis: How did you come up with conclusions out of that process? Did you end up with formal decisions or was the sense that the conversations themselves were the impacts that you were looking for? How did it land in some way?
Jason: I think both. So the conversations themselves and the generative capacity of those conversations, of people thinking of new things and engaging in the topics in a different way than they had before. That in itself was of great value. But there were also some outcomes that through the various conversations, there was some synthesis of those inputs that actually came to some conclusion as well, so you can across all the conversations: “This is what all the different iterations said, in a synthesised form”. So there was some output like that but there was also this value of we’ve engaged together, we’ve been creating some meaning together, we’ve had these small group conversations, which were just very powerful.
Kate: So, is there anything else that you’d like to share with us, that you’ve been doing, differently to traditional leadership models?
Jason: There’s another way we’ve been using conversational leadership. In a sense where the topics could be quite a motive or deeply held. Where there’s conflict, really, among a group. And so there’s a way of using conversational leadership, where over a period of time, you can create some space and a feeling of safety in the group and being able to share and really listen. The key is to listen carefully to what each other is saying. And over a period of time through that listening carefully and honouring each of the participants by listening carefully to their perspective and what they had to say. Being able to sit with those different stories and different voices and kind of make meaning as a group together to decide on a particular outcome. So it’s another way of using conversational leadership that allows that space and it’s more of a, it’s a longer process, I guess, that would be the difference. And you’re also recognizing that there’s some tricky things going on, there’s some deeply held things happening, things that people hold. And so giving space and creating safety so people can share those and bring those. And, as in a Christian group, we also say that we’re listening carefully to God in that process. So not only listening to each other but we would say that we’re listening to God so that the process of listening to one another and listening to God together can bring us to an outcome, which might be quite different than if we just had a quick conversation or made a quick decision. So this process of discernment through conversation is another way that we’ve been using conversational leadership.
Kate: We’ve done similar discernment processes, as a leadership team, haven’t we Nelis? It really takes you into a different kind of space, when you stop and you say, okay, we’re you know, we, we’ve approached this from sort of a businesslike way and a very intellectual, cognitive way. Now, we want to step back and we want to acknowledge our emotions, acknowledge all the different influences, dig deeper and see what are the values? And then just take some time to sort of give all that up and wait and reflect. And as you say as a faith-based organisation, we value listening to God. And actually there’s something incredibly powerful in doing that as a leadership team and just stopping and saying we don’t have all the perspectives. Obviously, conversational leadership says we need the perspectives of all and as we’ve said in previous episodes, for us as a faith-based organisation that includes making space for God to speak in. And others who don’t share the same faith as us but acknowledge the value of spirituality in their work, will – I think – recognize this element as well. And recognize that we haven’t got all that it takes in our brains.
Jason: I think it can be quite a remarkable process to go down. What you said there, that not only are we making space to listen to others but also we are really recognizing that we don’t have the answers and we need one another and there’s something quite powerful in that.
Nelis: I just finished yesterday, a book by Barry Oshery, Seeing Systems and one of his points is embracing uncertainty. And in some ways, realising that the opposing view and your view are both needed to maintain balance and to keep a robust system in place. Otherwise you just get fragmentation, in ossified positions, and things like that. I think what you’re describing is a way, is one of the ways to break out of that, to step back and say, why do we feel the way we feel and embrace each other’s position and get to a sense of shared understanding, which is, I think incredibly powerful and important to maintain a robust system.
Kate: And as a really kind of unique thing in a discernment process, the stage that is often referred to as “indifference”. You know, which when I first encountered this, I was like, “How can I be indifferent to this? You know, I’m fully invested in this!”. I think the essence of it is being willing to give up that investment, that commitment to a certain angle, the kind of obsession with the outcome you want and just say, you know, I may not be right here and I need to be willing to just…
Nelis: I’m aware that there are other positions that are just as valid and being willing to do what’s right instead of doing what I want.
Jason: That’s right. When we sometimes we hear the word indifference, we think, “I don’t care”, but we’re not talking about that meaning of “I don’t care”, we’re saying “I can lay down my deeply held conviction on this topic because I want what’s best for the group”. But I think that’s the essence of conversation leadership, isn’t it? That we are able to lay down this idea that I can do it by myself and we’re embracing others and inviting them into the process? I think that’s what conversational leadership is.
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Nelis: I think you just gave a wonderful definition. Well with that, I’d almost say we should stop, but we had a few more thoughts. It’s not all rosy and perfect and everything always works. So, two questions? Have you run into struggles, where it didn’t work, and how have you sought to overcome those?
Jason: Definitely, I would say that it’s two things in my mind where it’s a struggle. One is just the busyness and the pace in leadership. There’s so much going on, there’s so much call on our time, there’s so many meetings to line up, all the things that we all know about as leaders, all happening. And so, how do we create the space required to really have a meaningful conversation with others? And so I think that’s the first thing, is in this tyranny of the urgent, how do we actually create the space? Because it needs space. We can’t invite others into a meaningful conversation if we only have a few minutes to give to it, it does require space. And so that’s the first thing, I think, is actually being able to put value to this sufficiently that we can say, it needs the space that it needs to be able to have this important conversation with others.
Nelis: And that’s kind of countercultural for us, isn’t it? Because we tend to want to do things quickly, rush on, and so yeah, we … to be able to step back and say, let’s create room, for this is important.
Kate: Accepting that we might have to slow down in order to make progress is hard. And also, how do you find that space when you’re meeting by Zoom? Because we have these very structured meetings, an hour and then we go on to another meeting and it’s that lingering between meetings, it’s the mealtime conversations, it’s the empty spaces. That’s where the real stuff happens. So we’ve still got to work at creating that space, I think, in this digital way of working.
Jason. Yeah, exactly. I think we all struggle with that, this hour is this meeting, the next half hour’s that meeting. How do you really create a space in that Zoom or Skype or whatever technology you’re using, in that environment, how do you create the space? So I think we have to be very intentional about that, of paying attention to the agendas we’re creating and in making some space for things, just generating conversation together. And keeping time in the meeting, or that, But it’s, it’s not as easy as face-to-face conversation where you can be a bit more relaxed. So I think you have to, I think it can be done, but it takes more attention to be able to do it. Once you’ve got the space, whether you’re trying to do it virtually or whether you’re trying to do it in person, the next thing is actually to invite conversation, so that you’ve got that creative generative conversation of really listening to each other, where the different participants can actually contribute. Because you can create the space and kill it by starting a monologue or asking questions in such a way as you know, there’s shame or… there’s all these ways that we kill conversation. So not only create the space but then really create that trust by starting the creative and generative conversations, which we want to listen, we value the listening, listening to others.
Nelis: It’s neat, the way you’re saying that. That it requires practice and skill and it’s an ongoing learning process, just creating space is not enough. It’s something that we all need to learn how to do that, to not kill the conversation. And I catch myself doing it wrong. I see it around me happening all the time with all the best intentions of the world. Space has been created and conversations killed.
Jason: Yes. And there’s so much that goes into that. There’s probably a whole research degree here about how we show interest in the other person and in other participants, the body language, the eye contact, the facial expression. All of that would go into this thing, which is creating a place of safety to value and to listen to others.
Nelis: I think there’s a third one that you wanted to mention?
Jason: The other part of it is that the idea of conversational leadership is that it is leadership. That we’re not just having a conversation. You know, we’re not just talking about the weather and that was interesting. Or we’re learning something new and that was also fun. But actually there’s an element of leadership to this which means that the process is going somewhere and that might be obvious soon or it might not. It might take some time, might take a struggle. And you guys have talked about this before in your podcast, about how that you’re struggling, you’re struggling, you’re trying to get through this period of confusion to get to the point of meaning making. I was reading something recently, talked about a similar concept, they called it the ‘edge of chaos’. You go to the edge of chaos and you kind of drag it back into some place of meaning. And that’s a critical part of this process too. Is that not only creating space and in allowing the generative conversation, the creative conversation to happen. But actually, it does need to go somewhere or people can just get frustrated that we’ve had a great conversation. And then next month, we meet again, have another great conversation. But what, what’s going on? Where’s the process leading us? And so there has to be over a period of time, there has to be some movement, that people can see that meaning is being made and that is shaping the direction.
Kate: I love that you mentioned the edge of chaos. I think this is one of the things that really appealed to me when I was doing my master studies and encountered applications of complexity science to leadership. It was talking about the place that novelty created is exactly that edge of chaos, because that’s where everything’s kind of up for grabs. That’s where things change. I think that’s why we need to pay attention to who we include in our conversations. If they’re all the usual suspects we’re not going to get the diversity we need, we’re not going to get the new perspectives. So you bring in the people on the fringes, but you also have to tolerate that chaos for a little bit. You can’t have productive conversations if you just stay in the safe zones of what we know and believe and do already. You have to have safety and freedom to ask the wild questions, the things, you know, to tread on sacred ground and raise those things that we don’t really talk about and create that chaos and live in that place of uncertainty and chaos and awkwardness and just be okay with it. And as leaders, that’s hard. And I know that leaders from hierarchical cultures have said that’s really hard for them because you’re expected to know and give direction.
Nelis: But you also need to drag it back. You have that tension.
Jason: You can’t live there can you? It wears people out, that ambiguity all the time. Although some of us like ambiguity too, we can’t stay there as an organisation. You have to bring it back into shape and actually have some process leading somewhere and I think that’s this other element, that conversation leadership honours people, invites the participation and the meaning-making together. And this chaos, then leads over time to some new things and some good things. And this is the progress. This is the movement that we want to see.
Kate: And leaders have a special role to play in, both in framing the conversation, helping it to keep going in productive directions, and then helping people to reach some conclusions without pinning it down and killing it. Allowing space for the conversations to keep generating new things, as I think we were talking about at the beginning, we’ve come full circle.
Nelis: And that might be a good time to actually come to an end. Jason, is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to sort of bring out, or some concluding comments?
Jason: I think one thing is, is just that from my perspective experimenting with conversational leadership has been a really rich experience. So people who might be listening to this and going, it sounds a little bit uncomfortable, sounds a bit strange. I would really encourage you to embrace this and to experiment with conversational leadership because I think that in the process we ourselves are learning. We’re becoming better leaders in the process by including others in it. It has the potential to make better decisions. And yeah, as we were saying before, there’s something of that, humility, recognizing we haven’t got all the answers, that is also character-building in us. And so, I think that people who are a little bit cautious, of “Should we give this a try? What would it look like”? I’d encourage you to try and experiment with conversational leadership in your sphere of influence.
Nelis: And I couldn’t agree more and that’s one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast, is for people to hear the stories, to get a sense of “Yes, I could try this and start to experiment”. So, I’m excited about you doing that. And I’m also looking forward, we are looking forward, Jason, to what will come out of your research, and learning stuff that will contribute also, in academia, on this topic, because, I feel that there is still a whole world to be won, also at the research level. So I’m excited that you’re doing that.
Jason: Yeah. Thanks very much. It’s been a delight to join you for this podcast.
Kate: Thanks Jason. And as always, if our listeners have any questions or comments, thoughts to add to the conversation, head over to leadinginconversation.net and let’s keep talking. Thanks guys.