Presentation: Pivotal Conversations
March 19, 2008 by Bill Joiner
Filed under Applications of Leadership Agility, What is Leadership Agility?
I presented at a monthly meeting of the Massachusetts Bay OD Learning Group. The theme of the evening was “conversations.” The format had four presenters each doing two relatively brief presentations, with participants going to those sessions that interested them most. My session was on “Pivotal Conversations,” a central topic of the book on Leadership Agility. For more on this topic, visit this webpage.
My presentation addressed this question: Since the nature of effective skills for effective conversation and collaborative problem-solving have been well-known for some time, why is it that attempts to teach these skills to practicing managers often do not “stick”?
The crux of this issue lies in understanding and working with a leader’s “power style,” which is determined by their automatic emotional reactions when placed in circumstances where they disagree with others yet have to arrive at a common, actionable solution. For more on power style, see the book, Leadership Agility. To check out the online “Power Style Profile,” which takes only 10 minutes to fill out, click on this link.
