Conversational Leadership

Educator Carolyn Baldwin coined the phrase conversational leadership, defining it as “the leader’s intentional use of conversation as a core process to cultivate the collective intelligence needed to create business and social value.”

I’m saving it for myself here as a memo to return to it later—valuable framing for anyone who asks questions for a living.

A few of my favourite excerpts from the article:

“We are motivated to learn and to act by the questions we care most about. Yet we often quarrel about or act on an issue without taking time to thoughtfully define it or to articulate the deeper, underlying questions that can stimulate fresh thinking.”

“Without clarity of purpose and strategic intent, no one knows where they are headed and why.”

“Conversational leadership starts with a belief in the possibility of collective intelligence—the recognition that we can be smarter, more creative, and more capable together than we can alone. In practice, this leads to asking, “Who needs to be at the table because they have perspectives or information that’s needed?””

— Conversational Leadership: Thinking Together for a Change by Tom Hurley & Juanita Brown