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How to Build a Great Organization By Doing Something You Already Know How To Do

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I love reading things that reinforce what I already know to be true and then carry me to a new level of understanding. I just finished a truly insightful and useful article in the HBR, Leadership Is a Conversation, by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind.  They've written a book, Talk, Inc: How Trusted Leaders Use Conversation to Power Their Organizations, and the article is a summary of the book's main points. I intend to buy the book, based on the article...and that's rare for me.

Groysberg and Slind's basic premise is that one-way directive communication is generally not effective in today's complex, fast-moving and fast-evolving corporations.  (Any of you who've been reading my blog know I wholeheartedly agree with that premise.) They go on to outline the alternative: an approach to organizational communication that's more like a normal, friendly, two-way conversation  writ large.  Here's how they describe it:

Smart leaders today, we have found, engage with employees in a way that resembles an ordinary person-to-person conversation more than it does a series of commands from on high. Furthermore, they initiate practices and foster cultural norms that instill a conversational sensibility throughout their organizations. Chief among the benefits of this approach is that it allows a large or growing company to function like a small one. By talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, leaders can retain or recapture some of the qualities—operational flexibility, high levels of employee engagement, tight strategic alignment—that enable start-ups to outperform better-established rivals.

In developing our model, we have identified four elements of organizational conversation that reflect the essential attributes of interpersonal conversation: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. Leaders who power their organizations through conversation-based practices need not (so to speak) dot all four of these i’s. However, as we’ve discovered in our research, these elements tend to reinforce one another. In the end, they coalesce to form a single integrated process.

They then discuss each of the four elements - intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality - in some depth, providing practical (and inspiring) examples from actual companies and simple ideas for how to make these things a reality in your organization. Everything they say seems eminently sensible and feasible. Even while reading the article, based on the examples they offer, I thought of some new ideas for improving the conversation in my own company.

So what could possibly get in the way of this understanding and approach immediately flourishing throughout corporate America?

Sadly, it's the two things that always seem to rear their ugly heads when a more egalitarian and collaborative approach to business is shown to be more effective: the need to control, and the lack of trust.

In order to make their own communication and the communication throughout their organizations more two-way, leaders need to be willing to cede some control to their employees.  If you step down off your leader pedestal and engage with people as fellow human beings (intimacy), ask them what they think (interactivity) about important issues and decisions (intentionality) and allow them to have an impact on the outcomes (inclusion) -- it means you're no longer getting to call all the shots.  Some leaders are OK with that in theory, but not in practice.  A CEO I coached a number of years ago used to ask his team for their opinions, but then would almost invariably disagree with what they suggested or observed...and they soon learned to just go along with what he proposed. He actually thought they had simply come to see the wisdom of his point of view!  He and I really dug into his deeply-held belief that to lead meant to be totally in control, and he was ultimately able to be more open and to integrate others' points of view, and to have real two-way conversations and differences of opinion.  The more he let go, the more his team opened up.

Which brings us to the other problem: lack of trust.  I've often seen leaders try to adopt a more open, inclusive style of communication, and then get frustrated when people didn't immediately leap to respond.  Think about it this way: if someone has worked in an environment where one-way, directive communication has always been the accepted approach, and then suddenly they're invited to fully engage...wouldn't that seem risky?  That person would want to see some evidence that no bad things would happen to them if they interacted in this new way.  If a leader wants to shift the style of communication in his or her organization to be more conversational, more inclusive, he or she is going to have to be both patient and truly consistent - he or she will need to demonstrate over and over that no bad things will happen to people who speak up.

That doesn't mean that everyone's ideas and opinions will be agreed with or incorporated - that's not possible or desirable.  But even if an idea isn't feasible, or an opinion turns out to be incorrect, you as the leader can always listen, and you can always do people the honor of letting them know how and why the ultimate decision was made.

In other words, this shift to 'conversationality' can't happen overnight, and it won't happen without conscious effort and intention on a pretty deep level.  But I've seen that when it does happen, it's a powerful thing.  I was just facilitating a meeting a few weeks ago at a client company: it's a meeting the CEO holds quarterly with the top 25 or so people.  It's intimate, interactive, inclusive and intentional: real stuff gets talked about, anybody can disagree with anybody else, important issues get surfaced and resolved, people actually have fun and enjoy thinking and talking together.  I see how this meeting has a positive ripple effect out into the entire company.

Have you seen the 'power of conversation' in your organization?  How have you been able to make it happen, and what gets in the way of it happening more?

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Look for Erika's latest book, Leading So People Will Follow, coming in October from Jossey-Bass.

You can follow Erika on Twitter @erikaandersen

Interested in finding out more about how Erika and her colleagues work with clients?  Explore Proteus International.