Conversational Leadership

The Middle East Leadership Communications Conference 2014

Birth of the Gurteen Knowledge Café

London, September 2002

Global Knowledge Cafés

• Run them all over the world

• Interesting cultural issues

• Format always works

• People naturally love to talk

Café Applications

• Not just alternative for death-by-PowerPoint– Surfacing hidden problems– Management training tool– A way of transforming meetings– Obtaining buy-in to a project– Sharing good-practice– Instigating action– Giving people a voice

Conversational Methods

• Dialogue• Knowledge Cafes• Peer assists• After action reviews• De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats• Storytelling• Randomised Coffee Trials• Communities of Practice• Brainstorming• Open Space Technology• Anecdote circles• World Cafes• Post project reviews• Collective Sensemaking

A few examples of Conversational

Methods

What people say about conversation

The most widespread and pervasive learning in your organization

may not be happening in training rooms, conference rooms or board rooms

but in the cafeteria, the hallways and the cafe across the street.

Junita Brown & David Isaacs

Conversation is the most powerful learning technology ever

invented

Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and

spark innovation.

Encouraging open, honest conversation through work space design, setting ground rules for

conversing productively,

and baking conversation into the corporate culture spreads

intellectual capital, improves cooperation, and strengthens

personal relationships.

Jay Cross, Informal Learning

Our most effective KM tool is conversation

The words we choose, the questions we ask, and the

metaphors we use to explain ourselves

are what determine our success in creating new knowledge

as well as sharing that knowledge with each other.

Nancy DixonCommon Knowledge

Organizational Conversation

Conversation permeates our organisational lives

Business is a conversation because the defining work of business is conversation -

literally.

And 'knowledge workers' are simply those people whose job consists of having interesting

conversations.

David WeinbergerThe Cluetrain Manifesto

Conversations are the way workers discover what they know, share it with their colleagues, and in the

process create new knowledge for the organisation.

In the new economy, conversations are the most important form of work ... so

much so that the conversation is the organisation.

Alan Weber

Harvard Business Review

Conversations

Conversations to …

• Transform leadership• Improve understanding• Build relationships• Improve engagement• Improve decision making• Break-down organizational silos• Stimulate action• Spur innovation• Surface opportunities• Explore possibilities• Surface problems• Solve problems• Identify risks• Share knowledge• Give people a voice• Generate ideas• Coach people

Surface Issues & Break Down Silos

ISN Zurich

• Dramatic improvement in inter-team dialog, collaboration & knowledge sharing

• Many internal work processes overhauled as a result

• Explosion of new ideas & initiatives on the part of staff at all levels of the organization

• Empowered staff to speak up and take the initiative

Chris Pallaris

Chief Editor, ISN, Zurich

Transform Meetings

Transform Decision Making Meetings

• Break meetings into two parts

• To better understand the issues– Dialogue - Café style– Divergent– Understanding

• To make decisions and plans– Debate– Convergent– Making a decision Too often we rush to make

decisions without taking sufficient time to understand

the issues

Transform Management Training

Challenging MindsING Bank Academy Amsterdam

• Education programme for mid-level managers

• Abandoned lecture style training

• Small Knowledge Café style conversations around specific topics

• Short videos downloaded from YouTube

Increase Connections & Serendipity

Randomised Coffee Trials

• Pair people at random for coffee once a week

• Bank of England connects 4 people & call it “Coffee Fours”

• Serendipity

Randomized Coffee Trials

• Nesta• Cabinet Office• Bank of England• Mars• RSA• KHDA (Dubai)• DfE• Scottish Government

Organizational Conversation

Conversation permeates our organisational lives

Organizational Conversation

"Organizational Conversation" is the myriad of conversations, both formal and informal, that

take place everyday, minute to minute, within an organization.

Conversation is the life blood of an organization.

David Gurteen

Conversational Leadership

"Conversational Leadership" is a style of working where everyone

in an organization, especially managers, understand the

transformative power of conversation

and take a conversational approach to the way that they lead, manage and interact with

people.

David Gurteen

Conversational Leaders

• Purposefully nurture & stimulate natural conversations – are a catalyst

• Talk “with people” and not “at people”

• Ask questions of people rather than have all the answers

• Listen to ignite rather than reply

• Practice dialogue more than they do debate

• Speak up and allow others to speak their minds

• Take every opportunity to turn a sterile formal process such as many meetings into a conversational one

• Make good use of all the conversational methods available

• Make the time

I view anyone with a sphere of influence as a “leader,” whether or not she has that explicit job

description

Daniel Goleman

To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate

for those who see the world as being in constant

change

and who, without thinking that they can control it,

wish to influence its direction.

Theodore ZeldinConversation

Listening to ignite rather than reply

• Listening is not a passive act, it is very powerful action

• The attention of one human being to another is an act of creation.

• If I can be profoundly interested in what you think and what you will think next and where you will go with your thinking, you will generate ideas and insights and ways forward that you wouldn’t do without this attention.

• I want to be listening in a way that is more interested in where you will go next than I am in what I am going to say next. 

• And so I like to think of it as listening to ignite rather then listening to reply which I think is a profound difference

Credit: Nancy Kline

Conversational Architects

• Conversational Leaders are “conversational architects”

• Identify the problems and challenges that need to be addressed

• Identify the conversations that are needed & the questions that trigger new thinking

• Design conversational processes, convene & host them (typically Knowledge Cafes)

• Invite the right people – ensuring diversity

• Participate as an equal group member

Who is talking about Conversational Leadership?

• World Café: Juanita Brown & David Isaacs• Talk Inc. by Boris Groysberg & Michael Slind • Nancy Dixon• Henry Mintzberg• Gervase Bushe• Peter Block

Question

How do we become betterconversational leaders? 

www.gurteen.com

David GURTEEN Gurteen Knowledge Fleet, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 7774 178 650 Email: david.gurteen@gurteen.com