Tag: conversation

Conversation and Curation

You might recall me writing about partnering a few weeks back? Well, I’ve some more progress on that front.

Meg Peppin and I will be facilitating a breakfast conversational workshop together on the morning of Day Two of this year’s CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition. We’ll have more news on the session and how you can get involved soon.

In addition, Meg will be blogging from the conference and I’ll be helping to curate the social media content for the CIPD on their new Tumblr site. I’m hopeful we can get lots of great pics and videos from conference guests and speakers, to go along with all the blogs, tweets and other great content that always emerges from this event.

I think the CIPD’s approach and commitment to using social media to engage at and beyond the conference has been evident for a few years now, and though I’m biased, I think it’s something their team (including Johanna Ratcliffe, Tom Paisley, Robert Blevin and Natalia Thomson) and the wider membership and blogging team do really well. They’ve had and get lots of encouragement from HR professionals such as Neil Morrison and Alison Chisnell, and they enjoy good support from the wider community, and from specialists including Gareth Jones and more recently, Perry Timms.

If you’re planning on being in Manchester on November 6th and 7th and coming to the conference – let us know and we’d love to get together for coffee and conversation. And if you’re planning on blogging from the conference – please get in touch as I’d love to help share your thoughts.

Keeping it Conversational

Having just blogged again about how email is a poor substitute for conversation, I thought I should check myself and see how I’m measuring up.

Last week started with a shot of extra Joe Gerstandt via Skype quickly followed by an interview with Jo Dodds for Engage for Success radio. Tuesday was spent talking with clients about culture, effective communication and collaboration. On Wednesday I got to spend time talking with Meg Peppin and the author Jamie Notter on humanising work, before flying towards the weekend in conversation with Kev Wyke about business development, and more client stuff about making work better and communities. I also squeezed in phone conversations with Julia Briggs and Dorothy Matthew too, and a few very helpful mini chats with folk on Twitter. The week closed on a high after Susan Avello offered to have a Google Hangout with me as a sneak peek on my contribution to the upcoming Illinois SHRM conference in August.

My session in Illinois on connected leadership will be a series of building blocks. I’m pulling together a series of stories, approaches, ideas and exercises and I’m going to lay them out and encourage people to choose the direction of the talk on the fly. A lot of my work is about how good conversations sit at the heart of good work, and by way of example I want the nature of the session to be more conversational and participative.

Having checked my email sent folder I’ve not done as well as I would have liked, and a few people have had emails from me where I think a phone call would have been better. Sorry if you’ve been on the less conversational end of things this last week, I make mistakes and I learn from them too – I will do better next time.

And I guess another thing I need to check is – was all this conversation needed? Would our week have been more collaborative, more productive had we not picked up the phone as often as we did? I guess I should have closed each of the conversations I’ve been involved in with those questions, so I can’t speak for everyone but for me, those conversations weren’t just enjoyable – they were absolutely necessary. Thank you to everyone I spoke with for helping make a good week, great.

It’s Good To Talk

I’m in London today running a workshop on Managing Difficult Conversations with Boyes Turner. Conversations are a critically important part of my work and I’m intrigued to see how the day pans out. One of the reasons why people find certain types of conversation difficult is that we’ve simply fallen out of the conversation habit. Modern work relies heavily on email, and whilst email currently has a place for exchanging information, as the following figures* show, it doesn’t serve us well as a conversational medium, at least not if we want to be clearly understood.

How Well Do We Communicate

When you’re busy and your inbox light is winking seductively at you – it might feel tempting to resort to a hasty note and a quick press on the send button, particularly if the subject matter looks a little…awkward? But if you want to prevent awkward becoming difficult and difficult becoming even worse, why not pin this little chart on the wall as a reminder that when you want to be understood, it’s good to talk. 

* Source: Profs. Justin Kruger of New York University and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago