Conversation as a Core business process
A generative conversation is one that has a powerful impact on its participants, sparking new insights and assisting in solving challenges in a radical way.
It gives life to organisations to help them achieve their visions.
Fernando Flores highlighted that “an organisation’s results are determined through webs of human commitments, born in webs of human conversations.
Various Organisation Development (OD) studies have discovered that a lot of conversations occur within organisations in the form of meetings, strategy sessions and training sessions to mention just a few.
However, most leaders are failing to leverage on these conversations. Research has shown that the network of conversations catalyses action.
It is through conversations that people discover who cares about what, and who will take accountability for what action.
It is the means through which requests are initiated and commitments made.
This perspective, makes a useful operating principle for organisational life, “start talking and get to work!”
Conversational leadership therefore requires commitment and follow up to enable individuals to live up to their commitments.
This week we explore the characteristics that set apart generative, transformative conversations from the many exchanges that occur daily at the workplace.
Mutual respect — For conversations to be fruitful there should be a reasonable level of respect between participants.
Lack of respect results in conflicts and in lack of commitment. Mutual respect in the workplace gives employees comfort of knowing that they are valued for their achievements, abilities, and qualities.
This helps promote a positive work culture in which employees are fulfilled, loyal, engaged, and motivated to perform at their very best.
Ability to listen to each other – Listening is a critical skill in communicating and conversations, it can increase productivity, boost employee confidence, and reduces errors.
Matt Toledo notes that active listening makes a leader influential because they lean into the person and try to understand, build trust and empathise before developing solutions and recommendations.
Strengthened relationships- Conversational leadership promotes strengthened relationships as it enables leaders to find common goals and interests between them and their teams.
Frequent conversations also strength relationships as teams are always aligned.
Shared Meaning- Is understanding each other’s perspective well enough to accept them as legitimate in the context of exploring and realising a desired future.
Shared meaning involves each member in the conversation sharing what is meaningful to them pertaining to creating the desired future they are seeking to create.
Exploring questions that matter- When engaging in business conversations, it is important to focus on the questions that have material impact on the subject at hand.
This helps to ensure that the conversation is fruitful and tackles the issues at hand.
Mutual commitment – Is characterised by moving forward together. This approach reflects a team’s position and makes people development, fulfilment, and commitment main factors of progress.
Learning conversations – Conversation is one of the powerful learning tools at the disposal of teams.
It is through conversations that teams can leverage on the knowledge capital within the organisation.
These conversations are focused on coaching designed to help teams expand their capabilities for learning and leadership.
The above skills are critical to having productive conversations within the workplace leading to improved productivity and innovation.
Chiedza Kadare is an OD Practitioner. You can get in touch with her on
WhatsApp/call +263 77 283 0986 or Email chiedza.kadare@gmail.com
Paul Nyausaru is an OD Practitioner and leadership coach. For all your OD interventions and leadership development training you can get in touch with him on WhatsApp/call +263774062756 or Email pnyausaru@gmail.com
