Tag Archives: transformation

Patricia Shaw On Conversation

Patricia Shaw has worked as an organisational coach and consultant for 20 years, helping both public and private sector executives rethink their approach to leadership. She tends to discourage reliance on the abstractions of 2 by 2 matrices, idealised schemas and simplified typologies that characterise much of the management literature with their emphasis on large scale programmatic approaches to strategic change. Instead she encourages people to live with the immediate paradoxes and complexities of organisational leadership where we must act with intention into the essentially unknowable. She concentrates on helping people convene and participate in more emergent organising processes in which lively sense-making may flourish, paying particular attention to the part they play in constructing the cultural and political contexts of their organisations and institutions. source: Shumacher College UK

Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change Amazon

In red, what I would love to converse about with Ms. Shaw, (except this would be managing the conversation.) Still, I’d love to see what we could come up with.

My keynote for 2014 was searching for dyadic relationships that–to me–are the foundation of deep probing open-ended, self-organizing, conversations. Two persons answered the call of the many chosen. Thanks RL for the pointer toward Ms. Shaw.

from Chris Rogers’s superb bullet points regarding Ms. Shaw

Change
Work from the process outwards.
Change the conversation and then draw attention to it – does it make sense?
Work with energy and intent; but it happens in the moment, through the conversation.
There is no beginning of change – How did it come about? . . . And how did that? . . .
No start, just emergence – so work from here.
Understanding comes with insight; and faith and trust come with understanding.
Engage with people who have the motivation, interest and sense of urgency – invite them to take up the invitation to make sense of what’s happening.
Beware the reification of models.

Mode of enquiry engaged through conversation
What kind of causality do we employ to make sense of our decisions and actions?

Paying attention to the movement of sensemaking
What are we finding ourselves talking about?

Attributes of ‘good’ conversation• Free flowing.• Sensitivity to emerging themes.• Alertness to rhetorical ploys.• Introducing themes from other communities.• Awareness of shifts in anxiety/ spontaneity.• Holding ambiguity to allow the novel to emerge. Alertness to conscious processes which trap us.

source and hat top to Chris Rogers, Informal Coalitions Blog

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Filed under social psychology, organizational development