Pages

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Are you having a nutritious conversation – essentials and why?


As Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind argue in this piece; leadership in the 21st century is like a conversation - they refer to it as “organizational conversation” leadership model.

Most of us have started to realize the necessity to drive our engagement with our employees and other stakeholders in a conversational manner. But I wish to go a step further – how many leaders of today have started to check if they are having a nutritious conversation?

Do you ever think about why we have a conversation? The easy answers are because we want something and need to communicate, to express our opinion, get to know the other person or when we really have nothing else to do or without any productive reason i.e. sometimes you might engage in a conversation because you are bored, sad or happy, just because it's lunchtime, or because that the other person looks so good.

Those are some of the emotional and physical reasons why we engage in a conversation but do we ever put much thought into what makes a good conversation – to meet our expectations from it. Why nutrition value of a conversation forms an important quality that we should not ignore?

Having a Nutritious Conversation helps us in meeting our goals and meet/exceed expectations others have from us. The conversations we engage in, should be filled with necessary elements to provide the needed energy, excite and encourage the other person to function, with needed caution and a gentle reminder of possible ramifications if the ball does not roll at the right pace and in the right direction – thus meeting or exceeding our expectations.

Just like we need to put fuel in our car or recharge your cell phone battery, everybody needs to be fed with right conversation every day. In any organization, as I mentioned in my previous piece - leadership should come from within each of us and at every level. When each of us will truly appreciate the need for having a nutritious conversation,  each piece in the organizational jigsaw not only completes the void it is expected to fill, but also engages with other pieces in a nutritious way thus contributing to the overall organizational conversation.


Let’s have a healthy and a nutritious conversation!