Growth Talk: Leading Through Conversations

Outline

The unifying context for this presentation is learning conversations as a leader – who are they with, who initiates them, what are they about, where do they occur, and how do we lead or manage them?
The session will follow a recurring pattern of brief concept explanation (5-10 minutes max) followed by ‘turn and talk’ opportunities to collaboratively ‘sense-make’ and contextualise the concept. Questions will be welcomed throughout.
Concepts will build sequentially to demonstrate how the Learning Conversations Map was devised.
The session will begin by presenting a ‘continuum of conversations’ in schools – from non-directive conversations to directive conversations.
Participants will be invited to discuss the proportion of these more or less directive conversations in relation to their role and context, and to identify the purposes and intent of these conversations from their perspective.
We will then introduce and focus on a continuum of ‘learning conversations’ – those that present the opportunity to support the learning and progress of our conversation partner.
Three ‘stances’ – facilitative, dialogic and directive – will be described and the term ‘stance’ will be defined.
Participants will be invited to indicate where they spend most of their time on the continuum and what drives this. They will then reflect on where they would like to spend more time as leaders.
The term ‘conversation leader’ and it’s translation as ‘coaching as a way of leading’ will be introduced. A coaching approach will be defined and comment invited.
Building on the continuum of learning conversations, the degree of formality of the conversations will be introduced and explained. This vertical axis completes the 2x2 ‘Learning Conversations Map’.
Each quadrant of the map will be outlined - Formal Coaching Conversations; Review and Development Conversations; Leader-initiated Conversations; and Other-initiated (in-the-moment) Conversations.
Participants will then be invited to retrospectively consider all of the conversations they have engaged in as leaders over the past term or so and to place these conversations on the map. They will think about the degree of directedness (by them as conversation leader) and the degree of formality of context or process in which the conversation occurred. The learning here is about what influences the stance we adopt in these different contexts and how we can shift stance to best serve the learning and progress of our conversation partners. This is leading through conversation.
The session will close with the proposition that ‘coaching as a way of leading’ offers a contemporary leadership approach in complex human-intensive organizations such as schools.

Supporting research

I have been developing this concept for several years and writing and speaking about it. John Campbell and I have just agreed a contract with ASCD to publish our book on the subject. Below is a sample of precursor articles:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374025531_Coaching_as_a_Way_of_Leading#fullTextFileContent

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372490876_Engaging_in_Professional_Conversations

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369475581_Mentors_Who_Coach_-Coaches_Who_Mentor_Accompaniment_and_Stance_as_Unifying_and_Liberating_Concepts