Conversational leadership and strategic dialogue are important competencies for leaders and teams. The next few posts will focus on these areas of leadership. So…here we go:
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When it comes to leading strategic dialogues, creating a generative space where creativity and action-able initiatives can emerge is critical. The three dynamics that make up this generative space are: discovery, alignment and implementation. These qualities are both sequential (they create a general sense of movement and agenda from discovery through alignment to implementation) and dynamic (they occur in a non-linear fashion during the dialogue depending on what the moment yields. For example, sometimes alignment leads to discovery).
Let’s take a look at the idea of “discovery” and we’ll look at the other two dynamics in upcoming posts.
Discovery
Discovery comes as the team thinks both creatively and strategically about its future based on (to name a few) its varied past, the ideas and passions of stakeholders, the desires of the leader and mandates of the larger organization, the current strategic priorities of each organization, the situational analysis of external and internal forces, and the opportunities and possibilities that await the reformed team. All of this, and more, help create fertile ground for the dialogue. For a leader, her or she stewards the process and the ideas so that what comes from the discovery are the emerging strategies and tactics that will be made concrete in the implementation stage. At one level, the leader’s role is midwife to the best ideas and strategies of the team.
more to come,