Do you engage in focussed conversation in your teams?

At StrategyWorks we offer excellent group coaching and facilitation

As organisations move from the old hierarchical, command and control structures to the new world of flexible empowered workers and short term projects they are engaging in intense conversation.  These conversations are a prerequisite for teams to stop clinging to what doesn’t work any more as they face wave after wave of change.

But conversation is not always effective.  Have you experienced meetings that:

  • Are characterised by passion and strong views, where tempers flare and things are said which the group does not know how to manage
  • Drift gently in circles with no-one questioning the points raised or the process of discussion
  • Run out of steam as everyone avoids the Brutal Truth in the subject

Any group can learn to have effective conversation in which the participants listen with palpable respect and clearly present facts and opinions even though they may not be popular.

At StrategyWorks we have the skills and experience to act as catalysts in group discussions.  We bring communication skills and the ability to grasp the key concepts in your area of concern. We create and implement agendas and frameworks to guide groups through managed conversations allowing people to tap into each other’s creative potential such as:

  • Skilful discussion to reach consensus
  • Dialogue to open a deeper understanding of their assumptions and mental models
  • Brainstorming to create new ideas

We approach each organisation within a “living organism” metaphor rather than the traditional metaphor of the machine that must be geared, leveraged, initiated and controlled.  There are five core principles emerging from this view:

  1. All systems are complex (there is no such thing as a simple system – even between two people).
  2. We only ever commit to what we have created ourselves. Involvement is therefore not optional.
  3. We react to directives (not necessarily obeying them).
  4. For transformation to be effective all the different elements of the system (remember how complex it is?) have to communicate with all of the other elements.
  5. For maximum effect we must draw on all of the diversity in the system.