Effective leadership is all about taking on board the team geared towards achieving the set goal.
To achieve this requires skills that enable the harnessing of energy and drive from each team member.
In our article this week we explore the Conversational Leadership model which is geared toward the achievement of this objective.
What is conversational leadership? How can leaders use this model?
We start by giving a definition of conversational leadership approach to leadership.
According to Carolyn Baldwin, conversational leadership is “the leader’s intentional use of conversation as a core process to cultivate the collective intelligence needed to create business and social value.”
It encompasses a way of seeing, a pattern of thinking, and a set of practices.
To better understand conversational leadership let us focus on a framework that provides an understanding of the practice of conversational leadership.
This framework can be applied at several levels which we are going to focus on and see how the critical response model dovetails with the conversational leadership.
For the purpose of this article, we will focus on only three architectures for engagement which are outlined below:
λ Clarify purpose and strategic intent
λ Explore critical issues and questions
λ Engage all key stakeholders
Clarifying Purpose and Strategic Intent
The first step in the conversational leadership model is clarifying purpose and strategic intent in designing effective ways to engage.
This step is critical as it determines the issues that are important including questions that matter.
It helps in identifying critical stakeholders and the selection of technologies that will support the types of collaboration to fulfill that purpose.
A conversational leader will engage the team in coming up with the desired future and use it to co-create the sustainable solutions for the business.
To sum it up Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, “Strategic Intent,” Harvard Business Review put it this way, “The goal of strategic intent is to fold the future back into the present. . . .While strategic intent is clear about ends, it is flexible as to means — it leaves room for improvisation. Achieving strategic intent requires enormous creativity with respect to means.”
Explore Critical Issues and Questions
According to Mike Szymanczyk, Chairman and CEO, The Altria Group “Something fundamental changes when people begin to ask questions together.
The questions create more of a learning conversation than the normal stale debate about problems.”
Yes hard questions are what the team should ask to draw out what is in the deeper thinking of each member. Without asking questions, the real issues that shape the future of the business can never be realised which will result in thinking capacity deficiency. Leaders stand out above the rest by the way they address the issues and ask key strategic questions that define their domains of responsibility.
It is highly motivational to learn and to act by the questions we ask. Conversational leaders do not take offence to hard questions being asked.
Engage All Key Stakeholders
Conversational leadership calls for the need to have diverse voices representing key constituencies within the organisation to co-create innovative sustainable solutions. According to Gary Hamel, “effective strategy evolution depends on creating a rich web of conversations that cuts across previously isolated knowledge sets and creates unexpected combinations of collective thought and insight.”
The emergence of cross-functional teams and the ability of harnessing all interested entities under one roof point to growing awareness that a more robust “ecology of thought” is needed to fully understand any truly important issue before implementation.
Peter Block, in his book, “The Answer to How Is Yes” postulates that “The task of leadership is to be intentional about the way we group people and the questions that we engage them in.” It is therefore critical to consider the effectiveness of the stakeholders a leader engages so as to build a reservoir of knowledge that brings value.
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
