Effective leaders understand how powerful an opportunity can be when they can tap into the intelligence, wisdom, and innovation present in their workforce. Conversational leadership provides the space and infrastructure for knowledge sharing to take place; for employees, stakeholders, and the community to be involved in discussing big, important questions; and to generate solutions that people within the organization can take action on.

Has your organization experienced a loss of staff? Does anyone ever ask them why they leave? It’s an interesting question, since the answers are not as predictable as you may think. It also gives good insight into the nuances of personality that exist in our workplaces.

In this session, you’ll review your pre-assignment and learn how conversational leadership has come into the fore of organizational leadership.

One of the most effective bosses I have ever worked for had an uncanny knack for turning an average conversation into something powerful because he could ask such good questions. He never operated at a superficial level; all his questions made me think.

In this session, you’ll learn techniques that can help lead to meaningful conversations. You’ll also work on building your listening skills.

One of the best ways to learn about conversational leadership – aside from being a part of a conversation – is to apply the individual elements of meaningful, deep conversation in order to help you get where you want to be. 

In this session, you’ll learn about the Four-I model of organizational conversation as well as the importance of developing a common language.

Conversational leadership allows us to tap into wisdom and knowledge that is held by employees, stakeholders, and other interested parties. This is information that we would not have access to otherwise.

In this session, you’ll learn the elements of conversational leadership practice, including how to apply a framework for conversation and get things started.

There are many different models that you can apply to tap into the best of people and learn what they think. World Café is a powerful, effective model that encourages input from all levels of ability and function within an organization.

In this session, you’ll learn how to set up a World Café as an example of your ability to bring conversational leadership to life in your organization.

Now that you have completed this course on Conversational Leadership, how will you use the things you have learned? Creating a personal action plan can help you to stay on track, and on target. When you take responsibility for yourself and your results, you get things done.

In this session, you will be asked questions to help you plan your short-term and long-term goals. This final exercise is a way for you to synthesize the learning that you have done, and to put it into practice.

Congratulations! You have completed the course "Conversational Leadership."

In this course, we talked about the value of meaningful conversations as a way to create common understanding and to share knowledge and wisdom within an organization.

First, we defined conversational leadership and what it can contribute to the organization.

Next, we learned the Four I’s of conversational leadership: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. We also learned about the importance of common language in facilitating sharing and meaningful conversation.

Then, we moved on to explore a powerful framework for conversational leadership. This includes conversation as a central process where key stakeholders are included, the best questions, and leveraging the strengths of collaboration and social technologies. The framework facilitates the setting of purpose and strategic intent, and results in taking action steps to accomplish the desired changes.

The last part of the course was a discovery of a World Café and creating a space that reflects the needs of participants, in addition to looking like an actual café, and leading through actual rounds of conversation.

You should now feel ready to take on basic elements of Conversational Leadership.