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Season 2, Episode 1

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Leading in Conversation
Leading in Conversation
Leading in conversation Season 2, Episode 1
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Shownotes

Lipmanowicz H. and McCandless K. (2013) The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures. Liberating Structures Press.

Kaner, S. (2014) Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making. Jossey-Bass.

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to season 2 of Leading in Conversation. I’m excited to be back for a second season, but sadly I’ll be kicking off without Nelis, who is unable to join us today. However, I’m really glad to be joined by Josiah Watters. Hello Josiah!

Josiah: Hi Kate. Good to be with you.

Kate: Thank you. Josiah is from the US, but living in Thailand, and he works in people development and organisation development and also does consulting and coaching across Asia. Nelis and I both met Josiah through a leadership course where he’s on Faculty. One of the first things I noticed about Josiah is his stellar facilitation skills. He always asks really interesting questions to get people talking. So, I guess I want to kick off with that, Josiah. When did you first get interested in facilitation, and why? 

Josiah: I think the first part of that journey for me was actually watching my dad. So my dad is a linguist by training, but he is also a teacher. And I remember, as a kid, watching him in different contexts, the difference in the engagement in the room when he would get up to teach, compared to others. Oftentimes people seem to be tuning out when I would watch other people speaking. And then when my dad would get up, people would lean in. And I realised, looking back, a lot of that had to do with the fact that he asked questions. From his perspective, it was maybe more of a Socratic method that influenced him. But he would ask great questions and his method of teaching involved a lot of dialogue among those he was teaching, and between him and his pupils. So that shaped me early on, and in university, I got involved in an outdoor education program on the side of my studies. And that’s where I really first began to facilitate groups. So we would take groups of people ranging from students, young students, all the way up to professional corporate groups, that would come and have these outdoor experiences together. And then we would facilitate discussion and discovery and dialogue. And so that whole process of learning to facilitate those groups really shaped how I went from then on.

Kate: That’s really fascinating. So, something you picked up almost subconsciously, maybe, as a child watching your dad, but then had an opportunity to hone as you got older. So, conversational leadership… when we were chatting the other day, you mentioned how discovering dialogic organisation development was transformational for you. Can you tell us a bit about that? What was so impactful for you? 

Josiah: Yeah, it was, it was a bit of a slow unveiling is how I experienced it. I was working with an organisation in Asia. We were trying to see more engagement among all the members in shaping the future together. We were thinking about how to involve people in co-creating the future. We were using that kind of language. And I came across a book called Liberating Structures, it’s actually The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures and it talks about how often we think of changing organisations by changing the macro structures. But they said actually, what is even more important is to look at the micro structures, the way that interactions happen in organisational life every day. And if we see change happen there, in those micro structures, all kinds of things become possible. And so, I was really intrigued by this book. We began to implement a lot of the Liberating Structure practices in our organisational life, and saw a great impact from that. And then I was at a little bookstore in Calcutta, India, and I came across this book that was on the shelf, called Dialogic Organisation Development. And I just picked it out. I thought I’d look through it and I began to read through it on the plane. And I realised it was the underpinnings of everything behind the Liberating Structures, why they were having the kind of impact that they were. 

Kate: Was that the book by Bushe and Marshak, that came out in 2015? That book was really impactful for me too. When I found it, it was like, oh, this is what I’ve been looking for, this makes sense. I’d read a lot of Ralph Stacy’s work before and I found it a little bit lacking in the practical application for leaders. And then when I came across Dialogic OD, and particularly that book, it was like a light bulb turning on for me. 

Josiah: So we had already begun with processes and practices that reflect the mindset and values of dialogic OD, without knowing the term dialogical yet. But we were recognising that all transformation is linguistic, that change happens through language. Everything in the one sense that we consider as an organisation occurs to us or rises through the medium of language. And how we began to explore that and that actually shifting what was happening in organisational life together requires different kinds of processes than what we had previously experimented with or become accustomed to. 

Kate: Absolutely. I think the power of language, the power of narrative, how you talk about things, changing how you talk about things can then change everything else within an organisation, and like you say, going from the macro to the micro. We often think that, where traditionally change has been viewed as a sort of top-down approach, that’s going to be successful. The leaders decide what the change will be and it’s usually the big stuff. But actually, seventy five percent of change processes fail, partly because they don’t involve the people at the micro level. I’d love to hear more about this. How have you been using these processes in your organisation? Can you tell us some stories? Give us some examples? 

Josiah: Sure. You know, I think one of the first things we ran into was the sense that the more people were involved in helping create something, the more they had a sense of ownership and engagement. And at the same time there seemed to be real limits on how many people you could have meaningfully involved, at least with the traditional structures, the traditional micro structures, things like a presentation or a facilitated discussion. Facilitated in the sense that I’m managing the discussion as the facilitator. There’s real limits to what’s possible there. You might only be able to work with, you know, six or nine, maybe twelve people at the most. 

Kate, Yes, otherwise, meaningful conversation sort of breaks down and you get question and response and comment…

Josiah: Right, and so what we loved about the Liberating Structures practices were that they allowed any size of group to meaningfully participate. And so we begin to use those. One early example was, I was in charge of organising our regional conference for our organisation and those conferences have been pretty traditional like any other conference you might imagine and in the preparation for it, we started talking to lots of people who had been previously to that kind of conference and asking them what were the best parts for them. What was the most meaningful, what would make it worth it for them to attend again, and so just really listening. And over and over, we heard, you know, the best was the things that happened in the margins. So we said, what if we move those things out of the margin and put them front and centre. So that was one of our first experiences was redesigning this conference. Really, it became an unconference, some might call it.

Kate: Can you explain what an unconference is? 

Josiah: Well, I don’t know a formal definition but it’s a conference without a planned agenda, without plenary speakers, without specific experts coming in to deliver certain topics. What we did was we tried to get the kinds of people there that we wanted interacting with our personnel. But we had to come up with a different contract with them. So, we invited them but we said, we’re not inviting you to come and teach a session. We’re not inviting you to come and speak in a plenary talk. What we’d like is for you to come and just engage, be there, be available. Engage in conversation with the participants and… 

Kate: That’s really important, isn’t it? Framing, setting expectations. You used the word “contracting”, you mean setting expectations, framing their role, telling them how you want them to interact, especially if they’ve traditionally been used to downloading information on people, sharing presentations. It takes some deliberate thought and action, to help people shift into a different mode of interacting, particularly when you’re using something like Open Space Technology. I’ve observed, it can be quite destabilising for leaders who are used to a traditional role in such events. Where is their opportunity to speak, to share, to download the information? And sometimes participants feel a little bit shaky. Like where are all the presentations? What, you mean, we’ve got to come up with the content? How did people receive it? How did it go down? 

Josiah: Well I think you’re exactly right. We had some of the guests that we invited that declined because they weren’t interested in that expectation that we were setting. And then others that accepted but did struggle during the event to adapt to a different way of being useful. And then others that really thrived. And for the participants by and large there was a very positive response. There was so much energy unleashed in the room across those few days. And some people that also struggled with running out of energy, which was interesting because they said, can we just actually, one person came up to me and said, can we just have one session with a talking head? Because I’m getting exhausted, from all this engagement there! 

Kate: Especially the introverts, it’s huge for introverts. If you’re doing all the engaging, you come to an event, you’re used to just sitting and listening, it can actually be quite relaxing, just letting the words wash over you… but, no, this is a very different…

So we kind of need to set the expectations for participants as well, you’re coming and it all depends on you. You’re coming to engage, to share your wisdom, to set directions, etc.

Josiah: Yes, that’s right. And I’m an introvert actually  myself and I’m going to actually encourage and try to model managing your own energy during the event and so there were some sessions where I just needed to go have a rest and have some quiet because then I had something more to contribute in the next session. 

Kate: I’ve had to do that, as well as you know, I’ve got Long Covid and sometimes I just have to say to myself, “Right, Kate, take a step back. You can’t actively participate in this session. You just need to rest while still being present and listening.” That’s quite hard for me as an extrovert. So, that was your first event, this conference, and did that go down well enough that you have repeated this? 

Josiah: We have, we’ve repeated it with some modifications over the years, so we’ve done more of a blend in recent years, between some kind of traditional, plenary types of sessions  but then with Liberated Structure processes for everyone to engage around the content and around the topics and then we still had places that were opened up for anyone to continue conversations. 

Kate: Yeah, that’s really interesting. So I literally just heard today of an event in our organization where they were using open space technology and they’ve actually just decided at the request of the participants to put a few presentations back in. I think it’s getting that balance between sharing information because the information you share frames and sets up the conversations, gives some input. So getting the balance is really important isn’t it.

Josiah: That’s right.

Kate: What have you learned in the process, what has worked, what hasn’t worked?

Josiah: We have experimented widely and one of my strengths is like discovering, learning, exploring, and so I was really gifted to partner  with some other leaders who were great at taking things from idea to action. I love the world of ideas and on my own I could probably stay there at times but I was working with some partners who were very action-oriented. So anytime I would come across a new idea, they would say, “How about we start it… today?” And I would feel the need to get more proficient, to learn more before we tried to put it into practice, but we would usually jump right in and start learning as we went. So we have learned a lot along the way experimenting with different processes but I think a foundational piece for all of these is listening. We started doing some coaching training, received some coaching training, began to be involved in individual coaching, one-on-one coaching. And the power of just practicing intentional listening as a gift to another stuck with us and we saw that over and over being the foundation for all these other kinds of group processes that we wanted to engage in together. 

Kate: Definitely, because if you’re not listening to what someone else is saying, and I think we see this happen a lot in those kinds of conference contexts, you’re actually sitting there preparing the thing you want to say. And I think, often in the old style conferences you used to have people speak from the floor at the mic and everyone would be lined up with their thing to say. It wasn’t really a conversation, it didn’t necessarily build, because people were coming with their different things. And what I love about a conversational approach is what happens when people do listen and build on each other and you get this whole different thing growing rather than everyone just coming up with their own idea. 

Josiah: Yeah. I think for me and my role as a leader in our organisation at the time a real challenge was that I wanted to model being a learner. I wanted to open up the space for the unexpected to emerge. I knew that the things that mattered most to us couldn’t be directed and planned in a linear way. And yet I was functioning in this role that often, I felt like I needed to live up to a sense of expertise or a sense of knowing the answers. 

Kate: I can so relate to that. Could you say a little bit more about the things needing to emerge rather than being planned? 

Josiah: Well, I think the difference for me is someone that’s trying to create a learning environment where they have a destination that they want the learners to arrive at, that presumes, you know the right destination and you know the path to get there. And that works for some kinds of situations and some kinds of challenges. But the things we were engaged in there wasn’t a proven, right answer or a proven path of how to get there. And so as a leader in that space the temptation to knowing the answer is a leader is still there. And culturally there’s a lot of bias towards that, like I felt pressured to have the answer but I knew that none of, no one of us have the answer. Somehow together we needed to discover it and that wasn’t going to happen if I was playing this role of the person with the answer or a person with a plan. And yet it was very destabilizing at times for people, for me in the leader role not to acknowledget having the plan, not having the answer. So we had to learn how to kind of create a sense of safety, or enough safety within the group to explore together. And that was a journey and it was, I think I’m still learning how to do that. And one of the challenges I think is that you can’t teach someone who already knows. So this idea of leaders being lifelong learners sometimes feels like a dichotomy because the more you lead, the more experience you have to draw from. It can be easy to stop learning because you think you already know and the feeling of not knowing, the feeling of learning can actually be really disorienting and uncomfortable. I’d much rather know the answer than not know the answer. 

Kate: How have you found this in the Asian context where I think it’s particularly harder for leaders to embrace this kind of leading as learners, as co-participants when culturally they’re expected to know everything and be that sort of more hierarchical leader.

Josiah: One thing I’ve seen is leaders that are able to have that top voice, to frame a direction of travel without saying this is the exact path to get there, that we’re going to need to discover it together. And so they’ve been able to have that voice and that influence from the top and then allow a process to emerge within the group they’re leading, as they figure out how to move forward towards that goal. That’s one way I’ve seen and then another would be a bit more subversive or indirect. For example, I got hired as a coach for an organization that was working in the eastern part of India developing different factories and it was growing pretty rapidly. And they were trying to train a whole layer of middle management to keep up with their growth. And so they wanted me to be a coach. Now, in my mind coach has a certain framework around it, it is very facilitative. For these clients that I was working with, they saw me as the guru. So rather than fighting that role I embraced it, I owned it, but then I engaged them in a facilitative way. So, for example, I would say “You’re so fortunate, you found me. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know. You’re going to be such a better leader after working with me”.

Kate: That must have felt uncomfortable for you?

Josiah: Maybe not quite that extreme but along those lines, you know, that’s what they were looking for, that reassurance. And then I would say, “But for me to help you I really  have to understand more about what you are working with, what you are experiencing and then I would just start asking all these questions. And things would start to be unearthed and I would ask them what they saw the possibilities to be, what their sense of the right move forward. And so over time, then they were able to see, well, actually we did this ourselves, but it didn’t start that way. I couldn’t convince them just by describing it. They had to experience it. 

Kate: Yes. Absolutely. And that leads me on to the element that’s really important, I think, in conversational leadership Is creating a sense of safety, psychological safety for people, holding their anxiety. I think Stacey talks about holding anxiety for people. Can you tell me a little bit about how you’ve done that? You gave one great example there. 

Josiah: Yeah. So for me, I think it starts with being more aware of my own anxiety, and acknowledging that and being able to hold that. Because it’s easy, I think, for me to come into a group that I’m working with and bring some of that anxiety myself. And so I need to be aware of my own and then I can be able to start to hold that for others. And I love the framework in the Dialogic OD book that talks about moving from… they talk about a container. And so the idea that a container is useful because of what it contains. So my coffee cup, it’s not so much about the cup, it’s about what it contains inside that gives it value. So the container could be temporary, it could be a discussion group, it could be a working team. But the process they describe is instability of the container, where it’s just starting to take shape, and then instability in the container, as a group that’s starting to work out how they relate to each other. And then you can start to get to real movement, interaction, after you get to stability within the container. And so, for my role, as a facilitator of a conversation or a group, I start off as as, in many ways, as the container for the group. I’m containing the anxieties, I’m aware of them. And people are looking to me to help manage the anxieties that they’re bringing. But as the group begins to form together, my role starts to move to the periphery. And so, instead of being front and centre, I’m starting to move to the edge more, as the group begins to do its work.

Kate: What do you do practically to hold anxiety in session? You gave the example from when you were working in India. You sort of framed your role and kind of met them halfway with their expectations of you. What else might you do to make people feel safe. They are coming to something quite new, maybe they’re discussing a topic which is destabilising for them. What will you actually do in the room?

Josiah: Well, some of it can be very simple in conversation. So at the beginning of a gathering, we might have people get into pairs for conversation and just briefly discuss what might keep you from being fully present today, fully present in this next session. What is it that matters to you most about this topic or about what we’re going to discuss and what might get in the way of you fully showing up? Just pausing to acknowledge that, to recognize, we’ll even do some brief things like a body scan, depending on the type of group. Just to notice, you know, what are you feeling, what are you bringing in with you? You know, tension in your shoulders, is your chest tight? You’re kind of holding your breath, not getting full, deep breaths? Some groups are more or less comfortable with that but I think it still can be useful to practice. But then for myself, being able to pay attention to what I’m sensing, internally, has been a learning process for me because oftentimes that gives me clues about what’s going on in the room. And then I can verbalize that, not project it on the people but I can say “I noticed this happening inside of me. I don’t know what that’s about. Does anybody have any thoughts about that? Or any comment, or…?” You know, I open it up, open up my own internal experience to the group and oftentimes then that will surface from the group, something that’s happening. And if the anxiety is pushed down and not acknowledged and we just try to move forward, it still leaks out. 

Kate: Yes, it reminds me of, we’ve been in this book group, talking about this book Organization Development by Mee-Yan Cheung Judge, who I know has been one of your mentors and teachers. And she talks about the ‘use of self’. And I think that’s what you’re touching on, and something I’m really interested in. And in that kind of setting, that’s a huge amount of vulnerability and transparency, that people may not be comfortable with. Do you not introduce more anxiety when you ask people to be that vulnerable, to talk about feelings? I’m particularly thinking about, working with Western men, who might not be so comfortable talking about their emotions. 

Josiah: Yeah. So you have to really try to understand your group, where they’re at, who you’re working with. And there’s a variety of things I’ve done to help make it a smoother on ramp for people. One would be if they’re people you have a particular concern for prior to a session to be able to have have some conversational engagement with them, to sense what might be helpful for them to fully show up and engage. It is going to be risky. And one of the ways that we deal with that is to move slowly, I think of it, kind of like a spiral or a funnel, like you cam slowly progress. So there was a famous study done. These people that said if you get strangers together and you get them to answer these, I think it was 35 questions, together over 45 minutes, they had a high likelihood of falling in love with each other. 

Kate: Wow, okay. 

Josiah: You know, the psychology study that was done. The concept behind it was, deepening mutual reciprocal self- disclosure. So that you’re slowly sharing a bit more about yourself and then hearing a bit more about the other person. So we do that in threes and you get people sitting close together, knees touching, really close proximity. And then you have several rounds of questions. It doesn’t have to be 35 and we’re not trying to get them to fall in love, but we’re getting them past the point of anxiety and to really starting to see each other as humans, so, there is a human to human connection instead of seeing each other as a role or as a persona.

Kate: That’s really special actually. That human connection at a deep level is something that we all naturally crave, we need, we’re made to need it, and yet our society, education, our cultures have sort of put barriers between us. But actually if you’re going to get anywhere in a conversation, in work, if you’re going to bring about change, then you need to, you need to get rid of those barriers. There’s walls that we put up between ourselves and put yourself in a vulnerable place. But I know that’s really hard for people. How has this all gone down in your organization?

Josiah: One thing that has helped us for us to model it. If I model it, if I do that hard work, and if I’m doing that learning and growing, then what I bring is a different presence to the room and that’s where the facilitator is as container can start to happen, where you’re creating a sense of safety just by your presence in the room, in your ‘use of self’ like Mee-Yan would say. But then also working with others that I had already gone deep with, we were able to model together a different kind of interaction and a different kind of conversation that would be different than what people had experienced before, especially like you said in certain cultural groups, that maybe don’t share that much, about their inner world. And so for us, we recognize that, some authors said, most people in an organization are doing a second job, no one is paying them for and that’s covering up their weaknesses. If you really pay attention , so much energy  under the surface goes into managing or as they would say, covering up our weaknesses and when you are able in a group, in a team or an organization, to increase the safety it frees up some of that energy for other things, for creativity and productivity. It’s amazing what can happen.

Kate: Before the pandemic we used to have a lot more in-person meetings. A product of the pandemic is we do a lot more stuff online. Has that been the same for you? And if so, how do you go about creating that container in an online space?

Josiah: I think it takes more time online. It can take more time has been our experience, but having opportunities for people to connect personally and to begin to share from their world and finding small way to bring each other into your world. And there’s lots of creative, simple ways out there to do that. But one of the things we’ve seen is that it does take extra time in the meeting space or in the conversation to make that happen and sometimes we do that in the context of the large medium, sometimes we do it sequentially where there might be a series of smaller interactions that lead into a bigger conversation. 

Kate: You almost have to create that margin time you were referring to earlier, like, when you meet in person you have the coffee breaks, you have the meal times, you have the evenings, you have the “Oh, I just bumped into you in the corridor and we were chatting for 10 minutes” kind of things, which you don’t have in online meetings, you sort of show up, you’re there and then you leave. I think we need to explore much more creating those margin opportunities and making them manageable for people, because often the last thing you want to do if you’ve been in several  hours of online meeting is hang around and eat lunch with someone online as well.

Josiah: Yeah, and we found that people often need some support to know how to engage. Almost that good conversation can feel like a lost art at times. So just the fact that you arranged for three people to get together and have a small group conversation, they might not be sure what to talk about or they might just play out common scripts in a conversation without really sharing at a personal level or a meaningful level and so we try to give a bit of prompting for people to choose. They can still choose what they want to talk about, but it takes it another level deeper. But I’ve also found it’s important to verbalize and externalize what we’re experiencing online. Because body language is not as visible and so on. 

Kate: If I’ve got my arms crossed and tense when you can only see my head and shoulders. 

Josiah: Yeah. So it’s just stopping to ask people, to check in and say, “I’m curious after I said that what was going on for you Kate, you know, what were you experiencing?”. And just simple check-ins like that. And also for me to model doing that. I’ve had to learn to do that anyway because I tend to be not very expressive externally. And often people struggle to know what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling. So I have to work extra hard to let them know. So actually I was already practising that when we had to move online, but I found that it’s helpful for others to do that as well.

Kate: There’s a whole lot more intentionality and verbalizing things, and showing up in a different way, I think, is what I’m hearing you say, whether in person or online. 

Josiah: That’s right. And it opens up a lot of possibilities at the same time. I mean, it has constraints for sure, but it has also allowed us to do a lot of things we wouldn’t have been able to do before. And working asynchronously. We do a lot through exchanging voice conversations that aren’t happening live in real time and actually find it really interesting to listen to a ten minute recording of a co-worker talking compared to listening to them talking for 10 minutes. In a meeting I might – if there’s five of us sitting around – I might start to get impatient or feel like we’re not equally sharing the space, I’m thinking about what I’m going to say. But if I know I’m just listening and I’ve got 10 minutes to hear them and I’m trying to really remember what I’m listening to so that I can respond in an hour or two – I’ll often do this on walks and will just listen to the recordings on the walk. I find myself really engaging in a deeper kind of listening. 

Kate: Oh, I really like that. That’s not a tool that I’ve used – I mean, obviously we send Whatsapp messages to each other but actually asking people to record themselves, say on WhatsApp or Signal, share that with the rest of the group. And then you each, you take the time to listen, That’s s quite a lot of listening time. If you’ve got a, like, our leadership team of seven people, if we all chat, right, 10 minutes. That’s quite a lot of listening. But still, it’s something when you’re in a different time zones, especially, you can do it asynchronously and then come to the meeting and you’ve already heard what other people bringing and then you start at a different place in the process.

Josiah: Exactly, that synchronous time is so precious especially for global calls where we’re going from the West coast of the US to Asia, you know, we’ve got about an hour an a half window. And so if we’re using that for each person to start off with their update or where they’re coming from, we don’t really get to much of the conversation and the follow-up questions and dialogue, that could happen. 

Kate: And you know what I also love? Those of you in Asia, at least in our organisation, often end up being in meetings late at night… and it gives you a chance to record your thoughts at a time of day when you are awake!

Kate: I think one final question for you – although I talk for a lot longer on this topic – but the big question for us is always, how do you move from conversation to action? It’s not just talk is it? And that’s sometimes the accusation we get, “Well, conversational leadership is just talk. How’s that different?” How do you make that leap to actually making a decision, doing something? 

Josiah: This is really an interesting one because I would say there’s an assumption in the question itself, that those are two different things or that they are separate and in our experience, oftentimes, they’re really not that separate. You know, would people be willing to consider that talk is action. And for us, we work with a lot of leaders who are fairly activist in their leaning, you know, they want to produce something, they want to see something happen, and at the same time, there’s a lot of energy that gets expended and then we have to start over again. And so the process of action and conversation being held together, I think, is really important for us. That we are starting to move forward based on the conversations we’ve had but we are paying attention as we go. We’re continuing to listen to each other and we’re expecting that there’s going to be a lot of adjustments and course corrections and things we didn’t anticipate that we need to learn from it, and be ready to adapt to. So it’s really both together in our experience that are important. The other thing I would say is so much of our focus has been moving to action. And when we move too quickly to action, we found it takes so much more effort to sustain that action. Whereas sometimes if we stay longer in the conversation, or some of our leaders are getting impatient, what happens is, coming out of that, the people involved move so much faster, and are so much more self-organised that they execute much more quickly. And it’s interesting, I remember reading a case study from the company WL Gore that makes goretex and other products. They talked about how they take way longer than other companies to explore possibilities. But then once they move to action, they outperform other companies by far, like their speed keeps their advantage. But their speed actually comes from slowing down long enough to explore together, to surface things that would have been missed otherwise, and for the energy of everyone in the room to be fully unleashed.

Kate: That’s really significant and it takes, again, a very conscious, deliberate patience to slow yourself down, to resist that temptation to jump too quickly to a decision. Sam Kaner talks about the groan zone, staying in the groan zone. You’re probably familiar with that and I think we’ve mentioned that on the podcast before. Don’t jump to the convergence, the decision-making, too fast because you might miss the thing you really need. 

Josiah: Yeah, that’s right. I like that, the groan zone. Somebody else calls it the zone of productive disequilibrium. 

Kate: That’s a mouthful, I’ll stick with the groan zone!

Josiah: But that’s really key, being able to stay there. And so for us, it’s the idea that you come up with a good enough plan and then you can just act it out, that hasn’t held true and so we have to keep the conversation open because we expect to be learning as we go and so we move from plans to planning as an ongoing reality.

Kate: Because things will emerge and then you need to respond and then you’ll move further and further away from the original plan. But it might actually be better, it might be where you really needed to go. I think the era of strategic plans that are in cement, or on the shelf, you know, that’s long gone, isn’t it? I think emergent  planning is where we really need to be because things move so fast and we need to be responsive.

Josiah: That’s right. That’s been our experience.

Kate: Well, as I said, Josiah, I could talk for a lot longer, but I think we’ll wrap this up for today. Thank you so much for giving me your time today. Really enjoyed talking to you.

Josiah: It’s been fun to be with you, thanks Kate.

Kate: And thanks too to our listeners for joining us as we start our second season. As always please leave us your thoughts and comments at leadinginconversation.net. That’s all for now. See you soon! 

Episode 4

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Leading in Conversations
Leading in Conversations
Leading in Conversation – Episode 4
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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.

Episode 2

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Leading in Conversations
Leading in Conversations
Leading in Conversation – Episode 2
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It’s good to be together again to talk together about conversational leadership. 

Yes. Definitely. I’ve been looking forward to this. 

So have I. In today’s episode we’re going to dig into the fundamentals of conversational leadership. What does it look like in practice? How does it actually work? In the first episode, we gave an overview of the six key principles of conversational leadership, and for those who haven’t heard that they may want to go and listen to that first podcast. But today we’re looking at what it is, how it actually works. And Kate, maybe you can start this off by saying something about that. Why is conversational leadership actually important? 

Well, I think we started to look at this last episode. For me, conversation has the power to generate new ideas, to help people come to new insights themselves, to help all of us come to new insights ourselves. I think that often emerges in conversation, more than we recognize or realise, and that leads us to make commitments, to change what we do in reality and then that leads to change in our lives. Both small changes and large changes, in our personal lives, in our organisational lives, etc. 

So it actually creates a chain of events, doesn’t it? Conversation starts with that generation of ideas, to new insights, to new commitments, to actual change. That’s quite cool, actually. 

Yes, and I think it happens so unconsciously, most of the time that we don’t realise we’re doing it. I bring an idea to you or just just mention something in a conversation. That changes somehow how you think. You bring something from your experience to add to that. The idea grows. It bounces back and forwards. You may mention it to someone else over coffee in the office. And then in it, things grow through those acts of relating to each other. 

Yes, and that can be both in the small things and the big things. And it’s conversations at an individual level and organisation-wide that are the core of real change.

I was just looking at the blue wall behind you. Our listeners can’t see that but I’m remembering a comment I made about how white your office was, and that led to a chain of events where now, you have beautiful blue walls! You know, just just a throwaway comment brought that change about. That’s a really small change. 

Yes, and even the big changes happen the same way. One example of that is in a conversation I was in earlier. We talked about the difference between survival mindset and opportunity mindset. That triggered for me all sorts of recognition in the organisation and then saying, “I want to talk about that”, and that then triggered other people talking about that. 

Yes, you brought it to us and now it’s an expression that we have started using and that changes our thinking. 

It becomes a thing, people start acting it out. And it’s not something you can control, it just happens.

We’ll touch on that later when we talk about changing the narrative. Because I think that’s a good example, about changing the narrative from survival to opportunity. 

Yes, exactly. But it’s important to note that those changes don’t happen overnight. You can’t force that kind of change to happen. It’s got to come from the inside of us. We’ve got to embrace something ourselves. 

Yes, absolutely. So, I think we were going to talk a little bit about the different uses of conversational leadership today. We in our own organisation have used conversational leadership quite a lot in big change processes. Concrete examples would be, we held a staff consultation about a financial issue that touched people personally. We also held a conversational process to set a new vision and mission for the organisation. We had direction-setting conversations with a group of staff delegates at our International Conference. So we’ve used it in those big processes and I think we’re becoming more comfortable and confident about doing that now, but it can also apply in our daily life as leaders. And that’s I think where we’re both experimenting still. 

Yes, I’m glad you mentioned that. It’s not just the big things, it’s also in the small things. Just recently I’ve worked with our leadership team to change the way we meet, to be more emergent, to not have everything nailed down ahead of time as to how we’re going to go through the agenda, and to really have more of a flow of unpredictable conversations and to embrace that. It feels kind of risky, but to trust ourselves that it’s going to go somewhere.

Yes, I think that’s really improved the quality of our meetings recently. It’s opening them up a bit more.

Another example is that I just recently started conversations with groupings of staff throughout the organisation where I don’t come with an agenda ahead of time, but basically say, “I want to hear where you’re at. I want to get into your skin in a way. What does it feel like where you are?” And that triggers a new dynamic and ideas to follow up on and people saying “Yes!”, and there’s a real appreciation of that. I think that again, that creates a dynamic of trust and small changes that allow us to move forward in new ways. 

I’ll admit, this is hard to do. I’ve been wrestling with this a little bit recently. Our default as leaders is often to speak before we listen, and these ingrained habits are hard to change. And also there’s the expectation that as a leader you will lead, you will have ideas. I think we mentioned this last time. It also takes a lot more time to open up a decision to conversation and consultation. It means being willing to pay attention to feedback, and reconsider decisions. I had an example recently, with one of the teams that reports to me where the team leader and I had made a decision about a new publication we were going to do and she took it to the team and they were like, “Actually, we don’t think that’s a good idea. We don’t think that works”. I had to stop myself and go “Oh, bother. I really should have done this in a more conversational, consultative way with that team”, rather than just the two leaders at the top making a decision that we were going to produce this publication and do this. It would have been so much better to start out saying. “Well, you know, here’s the challenge. Here’s the situation. How are we going to approach this? What publication will work? What channels, etc?” So it’s a constant sort of reorientation of our own habits as leaders, I think. 

Yes. It’s good to know also when that is needed and when it’s not. It’s an art. It’s not a science. 

Yes. There’s no list of when to use conversational leadership and when to be more directive. There are certain situations where it’s just inappropriate: in a crisis where a decision needs to be made very quickly, you can’t say, “Well wait, we’re going to set up a conversational process, and invite all these people”. Sometimes you just have to make a decision. 

Yes, and sometimes it’s something that’s small enough that it really doesn’t have much impact beyond a small group of people. So you can just make that decision. Sometimes it’s a very short conversation that can be done in 30 minutes. Sometimes it’s a very prolonged process. And knowing that is something we all need to learn. 

So Nelis, what do you think it takes to use conversation leadership well in day-to-day management? How does that work for you, for example? 

There are two aspects of that – and I think we need to go into this more deeply in a separate podcast – but there is an element of things to do and there’s an element of attitudes. So the “things to do” is, you need to consciously empower others. So, to help people come up with their own solutions, rather than present the solution to people, and basically say, “Yay, or nay?”. Secondly, I think it requires that you build connections with all the different stakeholders. So as a leader your role is to bring all the key people together. That’s I think a key aspect that you bring in as a leader. And as a leader, you also need to ensure that there is a diversity of opinions. We’ve talked about that earlier ,on our earlier podcast. It’s ensuring diversity is key there. Again, conversational leadership is about action. You need to in the end make sure that solutions are actually implementable, that there is actual progress, there’s a sense of accountability about that too, it’s taking it into action, which is again, a role of leadership. I want to underline those two things: the leader continues to have a key role, you’re not just a bystander, and the leader has a key role in ensuring action. 

Yes. Absolutely. You mentioned, it’s about attitudes. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? What should be the attitudes of the leader? 

Yes, I think a key attitude of the leader is openness. So that means that you allow this process of thinking out loud together. I find myself constantly saying that, I am just thinking out loud here. Please give your ideas, feedback, etc.

Secondly, I think it requires transparency, honesty and open-handedness and that’s linked to what I said earlier, and that requires an attitude of withholding judgement. You talked about that earlier, that you don’t come even subconsciously with the attitude that you have all the answers. That you truly think that the answers of others may be or actually very likely are superior. That’s hard.

Yes, it’s hard. Leaders tend to have a certain personality type and are often quite confident about the solutions they’ve come up with, so it takes humility. It takes stepping back and saying, you know what, these people probably have better answers or solutions than I do. 

Because as a leader you think you’re the expert but many many times, you’re actually not. 

All of this is attitudes and approaches and that’s all great but it may be helpful to explore a little bit what the actual steps are, what are the things you need to do concretely in a process? So let’s explore that. And I think the first step in the process is framing the issue. Can you say a little bit about that.

Yes, definitely. You can all gather for a conversation, but you need to know what you are talking about. This can be a problem, a question we want to solve, or an exploration of an issue before the problem is even identified, is even clear. The leader can frame the issue or you can do that as a group, I guess. It’s important that there’s clarity about what needs addressing. But at the same time that may shift as part of the conversation, actually, the really important problem at the root of something may not be the thing you’ve identified but it may emerge, the deeper issue, may emerge as you’re talking, so you need to be ready to keep an eye on that really and sense what the real issue is, and let the conversation flow in that direction if it needs to.

Always with this sense of “What are we trying to address?” There is always this framing, but realising that that frame may actually shift throughout the conversation. And that you’re framing that together, but constantly keep in mind that it’s not just a free-for-all about anything. 

Because you want the conversation to be productive and it needs to be framed well, in order to be productive. Otherwise, you’re going to range all over the place and touch on lots of interesting things, but not actually get anywhere. 

Yes, another word to use maybe is to have clear intent.

So the next stage I think is then… well, you’ve got to have invited people to join the conversation, probably before you frame the issue for them, but you probably want to frame the issue so that you can invite people to join you. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? 

For me that’s a key second part of a process: having the right people in the room or in the conversation. The room may be a lot of rooms over a lot of time, and that may actually take time. Who the right people are may actually be a process of discovery. I think it is important to have a feel for who are some of the key people I know about. And then have these people point to others, that they’re saying, “I think these people would be good at being part of this conversation”. And I think there’s some good examples of that. 

Yes, we both read this book by Patricia Shaw, Changing conversations in organisations. I love her case study at this company in Italy – I’m not sure if it’s a fictitious or not – Ferrovia – the process of adding people to the conversation. I don’t know if the phrase “the coalition of the willing” came from from her or someone else, but it’s that sometimes chaotic process of just pulling people in and someone saying, “Oh, wait, we need to go invite that guy”—and they all had great Italian names—”in that department over there”. Obviously, that’s easier when you all work on one site than if you’re remote, like us, but still you can say, “Well, let’s schedule another meeting and pull that person in”. It’s almost spontaneous, but engaging the energy and passion of those involved or those they know, rather than sitting down with your list as a leader and sort of writing up who the logical people are to be involved in this whether they’re interested or not. And I love that expression, “the coalition of the willing” because sometimes the most obvious people, the most obvious stakeholders, are not actually willing or interested, but there might be somebody completely out there you hadn’t thought of who’s actually got so much to bring. I always talk about getting beyond “the usual suspects”. Again as we’ve said many times, the novelty comes, the innovation comes, when you invite diversity into the process.

Yes, it’s actually an invitation to the people. It also shows respect to people who have ideas, that even if they don’t have a formal position, they are allowed to be part of that process. They would be invited in. I think that can be very powerful.

We need to get better at that, better at looking beyond our immediate circle of connections, beyond the usual suspects, and finding out who those people are.

Yes, because we only know who we know. You and I know only  a limited set of people and that’s true for any leader.

For these people to function well, it may be good to be aware that people need to feel safe. So you need to create safe spaces or “containers”. So can you say a little bit more about that? 

Two people who have written a lot about this are Jacob Storch and Chris Corrigan. I have a little quote from Chris Corrigan, defining containers as “intangible yet real spaces in which the potential and possibility of a group can unfold”. Containers can be, you know, a one-off event or a series of events or a series of conversations. I think we should probably give this another whole episode at some point. Focusing on creating a safe space or a container can involve anything from the physical environment of where you’re meeting, to the code of conduct for participation, the tools you use and other intangible aspects that ensure the psychological safety of the group and the openness to share and explore new ideas, to make it a really generative space. It’s really important that people feel safe. Safe from the repercussions of sharing honestly. Especially if you’re in a leadership role, the dynamic, the power dynamic… you have to be really careful that you make people feel safe, that what they share is not going to be repeated somewhere else, or it’s going to come back to haunt them.

Yes, I think that’s really important. Because people hold back if they think they’re going to be hurt by it. That sense of holding back will kill the conversation and I think that is often the case actually, people are like, “Well can I safely contribute this or not?”. That’s really important.

I think we’ve both experienced that in cross-cultural situations as well with our multicultural teams, that very often the loudest voices in the rooms are those of the Westerners. Others are holding back and we really need the voices of everyone, not just our Western expat colleagues, but our Majority World staff, especially as we are often working in their cultures, in their contexts, in their languages. 

One example, I was just thinking earlier about this, when I was first learning about participatory methods, I was using the Consensus Workshop method of the The Canadian Institute for Cultural Affairs, the ICA. They had this thing they call “Workshop Assumptions”. We had written the assumptions up on a big poster at the front of the room and it really struck me. We kept drawing people’s attention back to the workshop assumptions. Things like “Everyone has wisdom”. “Everyone’s wisdom is needed”. Because often in group conversations, you have those dominant people, who consume the sound space, and as a facilitator, or as a leader facilitating, you need to make sure that those assumptions are respected, that we need to hear from everyone. 

You’re talking about facilitation and that actually brings us nicely to the next point. It’s a great segue into structure and tools for hosting a conversation. We’ll explore a little bit the difference between facilitating and hosting. I think it’s good for you to maybe say a little bit about participatory methods that are often used in this field. 

I must say, at the outset, I am not an expert in this at all. We’ll have to bring some of our participatory methods colleagues in at some point. But I’m a big fan of participatory methods and I’m very much still learning. I think there are so many great tools out there: participatory methods, facilitation tools. Some of the ones we’ve used are: World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry, Outcome Mapping, Consensus Workshop, Focused Conversations, Polarity Management. Maybe some of those ring bells with our listeners, but there are so many more. But one lesson that we’ve learned is that, while the methods and tools are excellent, we need to keep an eye on the overall flow of conversations. Sometimes the tools and methods can get in the way and take centre stage and that becomes unhelpful. I’m thinking of sessions where I’ve seen groups figuring out how to use the tool and that’s really eclipsed or taken the space of the conversation. So we’ve got to be careful, not to over-structure, and not to sort of focus on the tool and the perfect implementation of the method to the extent that the process becomes transactional, rather than transformational. I’m still trying to figure that one out, to be honest.

Yes, we’re still figuring that out. And that comes back to that comment I made earlier about hosting and facilitating because most of those tools assume a facilitator and as a leader or even as an outside consultant you are then a facilitator and everything kind of flows back to that facilitator. It’s the facilitator who draws the conclusions, it’s the facilitator who people talk to, and so they become the core focus, whereas a normal of free-flowing conversation shifts all the time around, people don’t talk to one person, but they talk to each other. It’s quite dynamic. That’s when I think you’re hosting, when the dynamic flow, the ebb and flow of conversation happens naturally. I love that concept of hosting. But as you said, we’re still figuring out what that looks like and how to do that in practice.

But it’s hard to host as a participant as well, isn’t it? I’ve observed you doing this in our leadership team meetings where you’re hosting, but you’re also wanting to contribute as yourself. Any reflections on that experience?

Yes, actually it’s interesting because I think that’s the power of it. Because if you’re facilitating, you can’t. But if you’re hosting you are actually a participant yourself as well. I mean, think of the host of a dinner party. The host participates, the host makes sure that the conversation keeps flowing, but at the same time participates and engages and has his or her own opinions, asks questions, brings people in who are quiet. I think that idea is actually quite powerful because as a leader you’re not just a facilitator. You have to participate because you’ve got a lot to contribute, others have a lot to contribute, but you do too. So, I find that a very powerful concept. And maybe that takes us, then actually quite naturally, to the next element of our process thoughts: you need to make space for the spontaneous. You already quoted Patricia Shaw. Anything more you want to say about that?

This is such a challenge, especially for someone who’s a bit of a planner like me. A bit of a “J” on the Myers-Briggs inventory. Yes, spontaneity, going with the flow. We referred to this earlier when we were talking about framing as well – watching for the real issue that emerges, but being ready to flex and change your plans at the last minute, and even mid-session is, I think, hard for us as leaders, but essential as hosts. This is where leading by feel and intuition comes in. I was thinking about an example from our International Conference in 2016 where I was on the facilitation team. While we were planning, a couple of months before, I had this sense that one session, I think it was the Saturday morning, it was a real pivotal moment. I think it was actually exactly halfway through the event. I just had this sense that that session would be pivotal and that we should hold our plans lightly. And that was really sort of scary paying attention to my intuition there. But sure enough that session came round and got completely diverted into a topic that had arisen during the event that one of the participants had brought to the facilitation team and said, “I think we need to actually pay attention to what’s arisen here and talk about some of the things people shared”. I was standing at the back with my notes for the day, you know, almost throwing away a page at a time as the minutes ticked on through the session. But I was okay because I had had that sense before that this was going to happen. For me, that was probably a bit of a God moment being sort of given that nudge beforehand. So I was ready to abandon my session plans, and flex. Actually I think we had 15 minutes left at the end to try and fit everything from the session and we didn’t, we reworked it, but that change was exactly what we needed at the time in that overall process. So I think that making space for the spontaneous is really important. And also as part of that, paying attention to the small things that happen, the throwaway comments with people outside of these containers, outside of these formal processes, picking up on things. I remember we did a conversational process about one of our action plans. We got our operational units to give feedback. In the margin of one of the group’s notes, they’d done some doodles for a way to express the action plan goals. It was such a great sort of global thing. I think we had a very linear representation at the time—an arrow—I think you might have actually created it. They had this little doodle and we gave that to our designer who then came up with that and it became a sort of logo. Asia had it printed on mugs, somebody else had a key ring or something, and it was just really fun to see. It’s paying attention to those small things, as well as the big things, and, and just being spontaneous and adding those in.

Yes, I love that. That requires something else we’ve talked about in the process, is that you need to stay long enough in the groan zone.

What’s “the groan zone”, Nelis?

Sam Kaner has done some work on that: The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making talks about that. But the groan zone is this area, the time in the process, where you have no idea how it’s going to ever come to a good conclusion. I’ve often seen that. You’ve got this sense of “This plane is not going to land!”

Yes, it’s horrible. What are we doing? Where are we going to end up on this? 

Exactly. That sense of staying there. Not trying to quickly move out of it and get to the comfortable solution. Staying in that exploratory phase where things seem to go in every direction. To embrace that chaos and then consciously stay at it. I think that’s quite important. It feels very messy. It feels disorganised. It feels frustrating. It’s not for nothing called the groan zone. That is where in a way, the creativity happens. That’s where people are forced outside of their comfort zone and to explore new ways of looking at things. 

Yes. The way that Kaner brings it up in his book, he’s talking about a process where you have a time of gathering as much input as you can, a sort of divergent phase. And it’s the turning point before you head into the convergent phase, where you’re trying to sort of settle and come to conclusions and action items, etc. If you try to jump too quickly into that convergence, you’ll miss that essential kind of magic that happens in the groan zone where suddenly everything sort of settles out and people come to a realisation and then agreements start to form and directions flow. I think we’ve all been there. I loved it when I came across this, in this book, The Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision-making, he calls it the groan zone. I was like, “Yes! That perfectly describes it”. I often tell people beforehand now. “There’s going to be this thing called the groan zone and you’ll know when we get there because it’s horrible, and you just think, “Why are we doing this? Can we have a coffee break now? Can we leave? Can we finish?””. 

And there’s a comfort in knowing that isn’t there? That, yes, this is normal.

We need to grow our tolerance for uncertainty, and ambiguity and chaos, I think, and our patience and trust in each other and trust in the process.

But you do need to come to conclusions, which is then the last part we wanted to talk about, the last part of the process we want to explore, is you need to come to conclusions. That actually means that all of the conversations need to then be translated into commitments to do something, to act. I think it’s really important to note here that those conclusions are not about the prescriptions for everyone else, what they need to do. It is actually what you commit to yourself. What am I going to do? What do I commit to? And that’s quite different. But I think that’s important. The conclusions are about my commitment to the change.

Yes, Dialogic Organisation Development – Bushe and Marshak – they talk about probes as one of the as the outcome, where you go from a dialogic process. This is giving the people involved in the process the permission, the space, to then launch probes. That means to try things out, to put their innovations into practice. You create space for them to do that in their job. And you give them budget, you give them the permissions necessary for them to try things out and attempt to work out the conclusions reached in the conversation. That’s again another area we need to look into experimenting with. Because what you don’t want is a great conversation to happen and then everything to get handed back to the leaders, who we all know are often the bottleneck in processes, in change. As leaders we need to start opening up space for others to experiment and try things out and also to fail because we can learn from our failures as much from, or more probably, than from our successes. 

I think that’s great, because otherwise you abandon the conversational leadership approach immediately after the first conversation. It’s an ongoing thing, it’s a repeated thing, and even that sense of conclusion is always a temporary conclusion, it’s a conclusion for now and then the cycle restarts. It gets repeated in different places throughout the organisation.

This has been great, Kate, I really enjoyed this. I really hope it inspires people to do this experimentation, to be part of such a cycle, to create space, to be in the groan zone, to innovate, to start those probes, this invitation to experimentation. It’s good to say again that this is something that’s an art, it’s not a science. It’s something that needs to be learned through practice. I’m really looking forward to people experimenting with this and sharing back with us what they are learning, where they have struggled, where they have seen it work, what’s been exciting. So bring your comments!

On that point, leadinginconversation.net. Please add your comments and continue the conversation with us. 

Yes, and we’ll see what emerges. 

Yes. Okay, that’s all for today. Thank you for listening!