Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Power of Conversation

I’m constantly amazed by the power of conversation in our lives, some of my experiences with conversations are:

I’m amazed at how many novel ideas I come up with during informal conversations. It seems to me that conversations help to pull new ideas and concepts out of me and others in the group. Considering this, informal conversations are especially rich sources of creativity, learning and innovation within organisations.

Conversations give me energy, they generate energy, often I find conversations as a catalyst for action. In this way conversations help me to organise and prepare for action!

Conversations help me to think, shape new ideas and concepts. Conversations help us to see the world from a different perspectives.
“…it’s through language that we create the world, because it is nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.” - Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership
All this leaves me asking for more……
How can we cultivate and nourish conversations in our personal lives, organisations and communities?
If conversations occurring in our lives and organisations are a catalyst for creativity and innovation, should we not be taking them more seriously? Should we not become more intentional in managing and nuturing these conversations?

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