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Notes from a Wits Business School Alumni Weekend Workshop facilitated by Liora Gross

On Saturday, October 6, WorldsView™ Consulting's non-executive director, Liora Gross, facilitated a workshop at the Wits Business School (WBS) Alumni Weekend. The workshop focused on the theme of leadership through conversation – a new way of thinking about leadership. This note offers some of the key themes and learnings of the conversations that took place on that day.

Leaders shape the world through the conversations they initiate and engage in conversations – conversations with individuals, teams and customers – and they move their organisations forward one meaningful conversation at a time (in contrast to meaningless meetings).

Conversation affects how we think, which in turn affects how we act. Our philosophies embrace conversation as a core organisation process, challenging the traditional view that talking is not consistent with doing real ‘work’. Given that, we note that, as organisations, we have re-engineered every business process except the most critical process – how we have conversations.

Participants in the WBS Alumni workshop were invited to experience the power of conversation and introduce a new way of thinking about leadership. This was facilitated by engaging all participants in conversation, rather than a traditional lecture or presentation.

The medium was a ‘World Café’ dialogue – a conversation technique that is becoming something of a full-fledged movement in the organisation arena and a powerful tool for leaders. This technique is applied in a variety of contexts and situations, from small group to meetings of thousands of people.

Thank you to all those who attended the workshop. We hope that you had a good learning experience and that this will be the start of many more meaningful conversations.

Some key learnings from the session:

On Leadership:

• Leaders shape the world through the conversations they initiate and engage in – conversations with individuals, teams and customers. Conversation affects how we think, which in turn affects how we act.
• The role of leaders is to focus on organisation conversation.
• Leaders can facilitate individual and group intelligence (as opposed to ‘group think’) and change through meaningful conversation.
• Organisations require more and more shared leadership, and this is achieved through co-operative dialogue.
• Leaders first should learn to ask powerful questions in order to conduct effective conversations.
• Leaders should structure conversation in larger groups to encourage contribution, lead to better understanding and improve co-operation.

On Leading Change:

• Good conversation can be catalytic in terms of opening new possibilities for action and change, with profound outcomes.
• Conversation is a core organisation process, challenging the traditional view that talking is not consistent with doing real ‘work’. (Schieffer, Isaacs & Gyllenpalm, 2004).
• World Café dialogue is becoming a full-fledged movement in the organisation change area. It enables large groups to think creatively as part of a single, connected conversation. (Schieffer, Isaacs & Gyllenpalm, 2004).
• A related example of best-practice application for harnessing energy and moving teams or organisations forward is the Whole Systems Event.

We encourage you to use this learning when thinking of new ways of designing your meetings and collaborative processes.

"…its through language that we create the world, because it is nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe."
Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership

About Liora Gross

Liora specialises in leadership development, change management, organisation design and development and human resources development. Her passion for her work plays out in authentic partnerships with clients, resulting in solutions that combine transformation with business results. Her experience spans major South African and international companies in most sectors, both public and private. Liora shares her experience and knowledge as a part-time lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) and the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of the Witwatersrand.

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WorldsView™ Consulting is proud to congratulate Liora Gross on receiving the runner-up award for Best Part-Time Lecturer at the Wits Business School.