Leadership and the Missing Conversation
Leadership is all about the conversation.
Leaders do not make widgets, take cash, transport goods or provide customer services. Or if they do, they are taking a break from leadership. Leaders attend meetings, make calls and email people. They communicate, and the principal device in their tool kit is the conversation.
Mastering the five Leadership Conversations is crucial for cohesion, and high performance within an organisation. When these conversations are absent, dysfunction and disorder prevail. When leaders courageously engage, particularly with the difficult conversations that others avoid, they can hold their teams together through complex challenges. Focused, intentional conversations pave the way for collaboration and successful delivery.
The five conversations are:
1. Enrolment
Inspiring others to invest discretionary effort in your agenda and commit to supporting your vision.
2. Disclosive Conversation
Connecting meaningfully with your collaborators’ passions and concerns, building trust and mutual understanding.
3. Closure
Resolving unfinished business and addressing lingering distractions, allowing the team to move forward unencumbered and able to leave the past behind.
4. Revealing Conversation
Bringing hidden agendas and unproductive behaviours (sometimes called “rackets”) into the open, enabling integration and honest dialogue.
5. Agreements
Structuring shared commitments to actions and relationships, and establishing a common understanding of issues.
These conversations form a virtuous cycle, where the effective delivery of one naturally facilitates another. For example, achieving true closure on a disappointment creates the space for a more open and productive disclosive conversation. Similarly, enrolling someone in a compelling vision makes it easier to form agreements about future actions.
By mastering the Leadership Conversations Cycle, leaders can create an environment where teams thrive, adapt, and achieve their potential.
In addition to the Leadership Conversations, bridging models about trust, responsibility, framing and shadow will also be discussed and explored.
Learning Objectives: By the end of this programme, participants will be able to:
Present a compelling future: Describe a vision that can enrol others in a shared vision, eliciting genuine commitment and discretionary effort.
Strengthen work relationships: Frame a conversation that can connect them to people in a more resilient, authentic and human way.
Build and sustain trust: Understand the different kinds of trust and how to focus on strengths while bolstering the more vulnerable aspects of the relationship.
Encourage future focus: Structure meetings to bring closure to unresolved issues and enable teams to move forward with clarity and focus.
Reveal hidden resistance: Identify and address underlying engagement blocks or “rackets” that impede collaboration, creating a more conducive space for openness and growth.
Forge dependable agreements: Develop precise, actionable commitments that can strengthen accountability and teamwork.
Take responsibility: Encourage personal and collective empowerment, by role modelling proactivity in any situation, retaining a choice of action.
Frame conversations effectively: Contextualise conversations to support productive interactions and increase the potential for successful outcomes.
Cost: £695 (+VAT) per person. Groups of 5 cost £2850 (+VAT).
Refreshments and lunch included.
Contact: Email Peter or Jim at office@neish.co to book on or find out more.
This is the first time we have run this as an open programme. Here is feedback from other Neish Events:
“The most considered and compelling leadership course I've been on. .. uniquely blends experience, theory, practical application and humour to make it a truly immersive learning experience.”
Jeremy Stevens, Online Director, Matalan
“A dynamic development tool that will enhance the dynamics of any team. We bolted on an extra day to put what we’d learnt on Integral in to team reality. What transpired was “mind-blowingly” amazing and insightful.
We’re an even closer and more confident team as a result. Can’t thank Jim and Peter enough.”
Michaela Buck, CEO, Mastercall Healthcare
“I've never experienced such an easy-going & engaging leadership course which has enabled me to confirm what makes me tick in business & equipped me with a real practical toolkit to enable me to succeed.”
Dene Jones, CEO Retail, N Brown Group.