When given the opportunity to learn and grow, people thrive. By adopting a coaching mentality and approach, managers can help members of their team realize their potential.

Why should managers devote time and effort to coaching their team?

Research shows that coaching leads to better engagement, higher productivity and enhanced customer service. It also helps an employee improve performance, overcome challenges, reach goals and build self-confidence.

The importance of coaching over just managing

To become a true Leader, a manager must develop the ability to coach others.
It is core skill required of every successful manager in the 21st century.

We all know that the days of command and control leadership as a standard way of managing people are long gone.

However, the art of coaching -today’s most effective way for managers to lead- requires learning a set of skills. If managers do not become skilled at coaching their employees, it is unlikely that they will be able to achieve sustainable long-term positive results for themselves or their organizations.

There are many different definitions of coaching, but the following one is the most appropriate for this case:

“Coaching is about connecting with people, inspiring them to do their best and helping them to grow. It’s also about challenging people to come up with the answers they require on their own.” Ed Batista

Several in-field studies report how a poor coaching-oriented management style has bad consequences on the motivation and productivity of employees.
Developing the skills and changing a managerial approach amid daily demands can be difficult.

On the other hand, it is widely demonstrated that organizations become more productive and employees become more engaged when adopting these two organizational habits:

• Managers using listening skills and communication to involve others, setting clear performance expectations, self-awareness (Sparks and Gentry 2008)
• Subordinates having regular conversations with Leaders or coaches where individual and organizational goals are discussed, Leaders give constructive feedback, both positive and negative, and Leaders reflect on their own leadership practices (Larsson and Vinberg 2010)

As a way of managing people, coaching demands for a set of new approaches such as:

• Collaborating instead of controlling
• Delegating more responsibility
• Talking less, listening more
• Giving fewer orders, asking more questions
• Giving specific feedback instead of making judgements

Shifting towards a coaching approach clearly requires the development of strong conversational skills and here again, research supports the idea that the majority of managers widely underperform in the ability to develop their teams through authentic, empowering and effective conversations, which are at the core of coaching.

What types of manager can benefit most from coaching skills?

All managers, regardless of level, should be trained in how to inspire and empowering employees rather than just telling them what to do; this provides opportunities for growth, development and autonomy.

Some levels, however, are particularly indicated when it comes to be identified as potential facilitators of a leadership culture based on coaching:

These groups are most exposed to the opportunity -very often accompanied by the fear- of coaching their employees to the highest possible performance achievement hand engagement.

At the same time, they represent an incredible opportunity for the organization as a whole to change gear and start performing at a new level: They are the best gateway to inject a new leadership culture through example, nudge and listening.

What are the benefits of practicing on conversations for Leaders aspiring to become coaches?

Practice is the most effective way to improve conversational skills and to shift the approach of managers toward coaching.
The more you practice, the more you gain confidence and raise your self-awareness.

Your comfort zone starts to expand as soon as you move the first step toward consistent practice. Practicing by interacting in critical conversations is the best way to improve managers’ ability to coach their employees.

The typical shift in observable behaviors we normally see in Leaders undergoing a consistent practice program on conversations can be summarized as follows:

Which Skills get involved the most in this amazing shift?

There are many skills involved with this change of approach.
Just to mention the most prominent ones, I would say that the following twenty are for sure at the center of this revolution:

1. Be aware of other people’s needs
2. Aim for continuous improvement
3. Be confident with the organization context
4. Be diplomatic and tactful
5. Be inspiring
6. Communicate efficiently
7. Ease change
8. Encourage and value input
9. Ensure accountability
10. Find solutions
11. Generate a positive mood
12. Give credit and rewards
13. Give immediate feedback when needed
14. Have a clear vision of the problem
15. Inspire standard of performance
16. Manage objections
17. Remove obstacles
18. Set goals and long-term perspectives
19. Share decisions made
20. Tailor approach and speech

But those of you who follow my series here on the blog certainly know, by now, that the two most important indicators that get affected by practice are:

• Confidence. The degree of courage, determination, fearlessness and self-perceived experience with which Leaders approach these types of conversation using a coach-oriented approach.
• Self-Awareness. The degree of consciousness, precision and sharpness with which Leaders are capable of assessing their own performance at the end of the task.

What types of conversation can impact most this shift?

Leaders face every day a great number of occasions to enter conversations with their employees, and there are so many types of conversations to practice with that any list would fall short.

However, should I be asked to define a very short list of those conversations that can really make a huge difference in inspiring, developing and leading towards a better team performance, I would certainly indicate the following four:

• Negotiating an objective. Leverage a coaching style to motivate the employees and to increase their self-confidence and self-esteem. They will perform better as well as strive for bigger challenges.
• Delegating. One of the crucial tasks of any Leader. Adding a coaching approach will improve the employee’s performance, since they will feel rewarded and appreciated, encouraging them to stay motivated and keep up the good work.
• Priority Setting Nudge. At some point, every employee needs a gentle push; a nudge to improve their performance. Coaching them through their daily organizational challenges will grow their ability to work better and more aligned with the company’s objectives.
• Giving performance feedback. Feedback is a key moment of the relationship with employees. Being able to coach them through a better understanding of their current limits is essential to turn obstacles into opportunities.

How can you deliver meaningful practice to your Leaders?

Fostering the ability to leverage fruitful and empowering conversation throughout the entire organization is the new goal of any talent development professional, since more and more multi-directional and cross-function leadership conversations are needed.

This is even more important in view of the general tendency I outlined above: supporting Leaders to adopt a coaching style requires a great deal of innovation in training design, to make sure that practice on conversation is not only included but, even better, placed at the center of the journey.

Training on conversation means becoming an interactive part in a dialogue and receiving continuous and multi-source feedback not only on communication skills, but also on self-awareness and self-control.

Role Playing is one of the most important learning strategies for Conversational Leadership development.
However, as discussed in another article (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership“) it does not come without some limitations if approached the traditional way.

Digital Role Play, instead, can be an interesting solution to overcome those limitations that are typical of the in-class approach.
In this article (“Digital Role Play Stripped Bare“) I explain what is a Digital Role Play and how it can be helpful to support a leadership training program aiming at delivering sound practice on conversations.

What is the typical effort in practicing to improve on coaching skills?

Having delivered thousands of practice bootcamps on conversations to support the transition of managers to a coaching approach, here are some of the evidences we collected on the field.
An average individual training schedule typically engages the trainee for 1-1.5 hour / month, with one or two simulations every other week.

On average, it takes between 5 and 6 months of regular training for 68% of trainees to gain an improvement of around 25% on their initial confidence level in the most popular types of conversations.

At the same time, we noticed that within 9 months of regular training, 92% of trainees achieve the same result.

We call it the efficient threshold of confidence, it’s where trainees get the greatest benefit in terms of performance at the most possible sustainable impact in terms of participation.

Where to go from here

You may now be interested in learning more about tips to select your next Digital Role Play system.
At the bottom of the article mentioned above (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership“) I provide you with a detailed checklist about what to look at when deciding on which platform to adopt.

It is also very important to reflect on how to integrate Digital Role Play into your existing strategy, since too often these types of tools are just placed at the end of a classic course for a quick “follow-up” that, most of the time, does not add any value, which results in underutilization of the enormous power and potential of these kinds of solutions.

Read this article (“Flipping the Leadership Development Strategy with Actionable and Scalable Programs“) to learn more about the best way to truly integrate Digital Role Plays into your L&D strategy.

Finally, if you are interested in discovering how we here at SkillGym deliver the best in class Digital Role Plays, feel free to book a 1-hour discovery call.

Written By

Andrea Laus

Andrea has 20 years of experience in the industry of digital learning. Since over 10 years now he designs and develop interactive simulations featuring video and AI to bring immersive and authentic digital experiences to leadership coaches worldwide.

Contact Andrea

Conversational Leadership is gaining daily in popularity. And there is a good reason for that.

Conversations are the energizing fuel of leadership, even if organizations sometimes discover this the hard way, when Leaders underperform in their duties of motivating, leading and supporting employees through this important asset.
The old saying, “people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses” remains true.

The need to create more inclusive and more motivating organizations is one of the reasons why, clearly, we need more and better performing Leaders. Also, we need to take into account the fact that our society as a whole is developing so fast that old patterns and old references get obsolete at a much higher pace.

It is very urgent to cope with this continuous change by developing a new generation of Leaders.

New Leaders who, at different levels of any organizational ladder, can provide support to a more inspired, stable and purpose-driven ensemble of employees. It’s not surprising then to see the rising interest in the potential that hides behind Conversational Leadership mastery.

However, in witnessing the growing development of Conversational Leadership literature, such as books, articles, webinars and the like, too many organizations are still facing the dilemma of how to integrate effective training to support development in a smart way.

In fact, most of the available literature covers the topics of Conversational Leadership and critical conversations in a very cognitive way, providing best practices to rapidly approach most tough situations, but fails to deliver an appropriate and comprehensive program to train the underlying skills required to master this area of leadership in the long term.

Developing leadership, and specifically on Conversational Leadership, requires more than a general vision of the subject and a list of best-practice tips to be applied as needed to some of the most common difficult situations.

Conversations involve behaviors that are highly dependent on habits. Simply knowing what to do, or even how to do it, does not provide enough foundation to act in a way to influence behaviors and, in the long run, to change old and underperforming habits.

If your goal is to establish a robust structure for Conversational Leadership empowerment, you can’t just rely on framing the issue of “critical conversations” as something you solve with some best-practices and deliver a few days of class to just let your trainees know how they should cope with it.

And you absolutely can’t leave them unsupported afterwards, when they need to find out how to turn such knowledge into habit-driven new behaviors and how to keep the balance between the different leadership situations they face every day.

Instead, you need to consider addressing the entire subject in a smarter and more structured way.

To succeed, you need to implement a comprehensive training program based on actionable practice and nothing is better than Digital Role Play as a powerful integration of any preliminary formal education.
However, in order to deliver it the right way, there are at least two ingredients that need to be analyzed in-depth and carefully implemented.

The first ingredient is the training methodology itself.

Since this is not the focus of this article, I recommend reading at least the following three articles, for a comprehensive conceptual coverage of this important ingredient:

• Why Conversational Leadership should be addressed with practical and actionable training (article “From Critical to Empowering Conversations: Let’s Change the World Using the C-FACTOR”)
• Why you should consider flipping the traditional training strategy (article “Flipping the Leadership Development Strategy with Actionable and Scalable Programs”)
• Which metrics should be measured when training on conversational leadership (article “8 Key Metrics to Ensure a Successful Practical Training on Critical Conversations”)

The second ingredient is a comprehensive Curriculum: one strategic plan based on a consistent vision, outlining all the elements required to cover not just the shortcuts, but also and mainly, the real pillars of sustainable skill set development.

The goal can’t be “fixing the issue” with some recommendations and a low-actionable formal class once in a while.
The outline of a proper Curriculum is instead the foreword to the delivery of a structured and credible solution for the long-lasting development of confidence in conversations and of self-awareness of Leaders in their own skills and potential.

So, when you look at consistent practice-oriented training programs, made of scenarios covering the full spectrum of possible situations to practice with, make sure you double check the consistency of the following elements influencing the good application of Conversational Leadership skills:

1. Areas of leadership empowerment upon which to develop conversational mastery
2. Leadership values around those areas, to make sure that the training delivers skills aligned with and respecting key values
3. Types of conversations to practice with that cover the four areas of empowerment
4. Topics that these conversations can address
5. Types of people (“characters”) with whom the conversation, whatever it is, may take place
6. Styles of leadership to apply
7. Skills to train to master conversational leadership

The intersection of these “building blocks” defines not only the different situations with which it makes sense to practice and the type of training that should be covered by the program, but also the kind of elements that require measurement for monitoring improvements in performance and the overall result of the entire program.

Clearly, one thing is delivering general (although smart) knowledge about how to deal with critical conversations, another is to cover all the building blocks of a complete curriculum, set up a measurement system and deploy a consistent schedule for integrated practice.

Let’s delve deeper and see how these building blocks relate to each other and how they can be the best foundation of an amazing and comprehensive training program on Conversational Leadership.

1. Areas of leadership empowerment

The first founding pillar of a training curriculum on Conversational Leadership should answer the question: what areas of leadership influence can be covered through conversations?
It’s a very important question.

I frequently see that the subject is dealt with using a very tactical approach, by listing a number of “difficult” conversations as they come to mind. However, the list of conversations should be the last step in a more in-depth analysis.

Starting the reflection by identifying the main areas of leadership empowerment is a much better way to proceed.
Incidentally, this element can be considered cross-culture and generally applicable to all types of organizations.

Even though the mix can vary slightly, I would recommend the following and well-balanced short-list of empowering areas:

• Lead. This is the key area of empowerment of Leaders. It’s where conversations can drive action and solve potential issues.
• Inspire. This area is the foreword of any engagement. People want to be part of something and inspiring conversations are the means to bring them in.
• Support. Once employees are in the field, they expect Leaders to support them. Either because they ask for support or because their Leaders understand it’s time to nudge them.
• Discover. Reciprocal discovery conversations allow Leaders to remove blind spots and be fully aligned with the reality.

In my experience, these are the core areas upon which it makes sense to design any training program on Conversational Leadership.

2. Leadership values

Before starting to play with conversational tips and tricks, it is essential to ensure that any technique, shortcuts and recommendations are aligned to a set of values that reflect the organization’s goals.

This interesting article by Jim Collins sets forth some important considerations on the importance of aligning actions with value.
The questions you should ask yourself are: does the curriculum you are referring to sound grounded in terms of value? Do those values reflect your values? To what extent?

It’s very important because if you value honesty, for instance, you can’t support a conversational technique that involves hiding unpleasant truths.
And if you value being humble, you can’t incorporate a conversational approach based on cocky and arrogant directions.

Whatever the conversation, whatever the topic, whoever the counterpart: stay true to your core values. Always.

3. Types of conversations

Let’s face it: there are so many types of conversations to train in, that you can’t work out on all of them in one lifetime. So, you’d better plan smart.
Go for the great classic 80/20 approach and select the most important types of each area of empowerment.

You don’t need to cover all types of conversations.

They are too many and, most of all, the majority are either not as critical as they seem (at least in terms of real impact on results and performance) or they do not happen frequently enough to justify focusing your training program on it.

At the same time, please steer clear of “one approach solves all”. It’s not like that. Although I would agree that some general techniques can be applied all the time, practicing with a type of conversation means gaining experience with that specific type of conversation, which is different from any other.

I would recommend selecting 3-4 types of conversations for each empowerment area. To make sure you cover what’s really needed.

A good approach can be that of dividing the types of conversations in groups, such as:

• Conversations happening frequently and/or pushing things forward
• Conversations happening less frequently, but necessary for setting the grounds for better performance
• Other types of conversations that can make a difference when things get really though

4. Topics

Don’t get confused here. Topics and types of conversations are not the same thing.
A type of conversation can be, for instance, giving feedback (I would connect this between the Lead and the Inspire areas of empowerment and I would group it within those conversations happening less frequently, but necessary for setting the foundation for better performance); a topic for this type of conversation could be the performance, attitude or a recent accident, etc.

Each type of conversation includes an abundance of possible topics, which is why.

However, topics are very important to consider in one curriculum since they are one of the key elements toward turning a type of conversation (which is a conceptual thing) into a situation (which is a much more practical thing and that can be addressed with practical training by means of role playing and/or digital role playing for training conversational skills).

A good way to make order of topics is to organize them with a matrix that considers:

• On one dimension, the scope of dealing with that topic. To be very straightforward, here I would recommend the scope being either to review (something happened in the past) or to plan (something for the future).
  Of course, each topic can carry (and usually it does) a piece of both. However, this classification is useful to select truly actionable topics.
• On the second dimension, the domain in which that topic is set. Here I would recommend distinguishing between performance/results (very objective) and relationship/approach (the subjective side).
  Again, very actionable.

So, for example, you may want to focus part of the training on the area of Support, addressing a type of conversation dealing with Ease the Change by discussing the topic of Discrimination for the scope of planning a new approach in the relationship/approach domain.

Whatever the case and the example, this approach to curriculum planning will ensure you define a proper pathway designed with clear directions in mind.

5. Types of people

One of the factors in turning a conceptual type of conversation (i.e. “delegate”) into a trainable situation, is the type of person the conversation is done with. Of course, you can’t design a conversational training program that includes practicing with any and all human beings on earth.

That’s why you need to select a limited range of “characters” that makes sense to practice with. Again, the 80/20 principle can help here.
Some types of characters are more “interesting” than others to play with.

The key criteria of selection here could possibly be:

• How common that character is, so what are the odds of facing that character in our next critical conversation
• How difficult it is to deal with such character once the conversation is started

Of course, the selection needs to consider several elements such as: the way characters think, the way they behave and the way they communicate.
There are several models to define the key traits that determine the way in which people deal with conversations.

This article (“Building Authentic Characters for Effective Digital Role Plays”) outlines the most widely used and I would recommend using more than one model at the same time, to make sure you have a broader vision of the different aspects to consider.

6. Leadership styles

There is no such thing as one leadership style fitting all the situations. Each situation requires the application of a specific leadership style in order to achieve the best effects in terms of conversational outcome.

So, you should carefully connect the dots between the above elements of the curriculum that lead to different “situations” and make sure that each situation is then dealt with using the appropriate style of leadership.

This is a key step. Much too often I hear about things like “we have our own leadership style, coherent with our internal culture”. But the point is that no absolute approach is really performing at all the times.

Instead, it makes sense to say “we have our own competency model” (see this article “Making a Competency Model Truly Actionable in People’s Development” for an interesting discussion about this subject) and, from time to time, we support a different leadership style to adapt according to the specific conversation.

And the specific conversation is the result of a situation which is the result of a mix of elements as described above.
Here is where you get the full potential of reasoning in terms of Conversational Leadership curriculum.

There are several leadership models defined as “styles” using different approaches that a Leader should take when dealing with a situation. Pick one, but make sure you make an informed decision.

If I were to recommend one, I would definitely say Emotional Leadership and I would suggest exploring the 6 styles that make up a very comprehensive canvas of different approaches (this topic is well covered by this article “Using Situational Leadership to Manage Different Types of Conversations”).

7. Skills

Sometimes I see a certain degree of confusion around the subject of competency and skills mapping.

This article (“Making a Competency Model Truly Actionable in People’s Development”) specifically addresses the topic and shows how to connect the dots (and most importantly, how to relate the abstract concept of “competency model” to the more practical and actionable concept of “learning-by-doing” training).

With that clarification of which is which in the competency domain, I recommend sticking to a very well-structured skill set both for the design of the entire training program and for the selection of each scenario of practical training.

Conversational Leadership development is about behavior development and behaviors are the building blocks of skills.
Therefore, it is very important to choose wisely.

Where to go from here

While reading these lines, you are probably planning or working on a training program about leadership. So, I hope I was able to deliver on the following:

• Conversational Leadership is increasingly becoming a part of the picture, which brings with it new challenges on the design side
• Working from the perspective of a well-structured curriculum is necessary to ensure consistency and measurability
• Since Conversational Leadership is acquired mostly through practical training, and since practical training in Conversational Leadership is best delivered through Digital Role Play, relying on a solid curriculum is the best way to approach the world of Digital Role Play design or selection

Most likely you will want to select a ready-made Digital Role Play solution, rather than building one from scratch.

In fact, creating Digital Role Plays is costly and time consuming and there are several solutions on the market that can well-fit your needs.

There are two articles I would recommend you read on these two topics:

• The first article (“The True Learning Scope Behind a Digital Role Play”) tells about the real learning scope of Digital Role Play and it explores the reasons why a Digital Role Play does not need to copycat your scripts and situations to be effective.
• The second article (“Making a Competency Models Truly Actionable in People’s Development”) mentioned earlier, shows how easy it is to connect ready-made Digital Role Play based on a structured curriculum with any proprietary Competency Models.

I hope this article was useful. I would welcome the opportunity to continue this conversation if you would like to comment below.

Of course, we would be delighted to show you SkillGym’s solution in a 1-hour discovery call.

Written By

Andrea Laus

Andrea has 20 years of experience in the industry of digital learning. Since over 10 years now he designs and develop interactive simulations featuring video and AI to bring immersive and authentic digital experiences to leadership coaches worldwide.

Contact Andrea

Recently, I was discussing three ideas that are quite fascinating from a conceptual point of view, but also much more practical than one could expect.

Here they are:

1. Leadership is not a badge that we can just pin on our own jacket. Instead, it’s something that we get recognized for by other people, typically members of our community or, if we are well known enough, even by people we don’t know directly;
2. Others start recognizing your leadership footprint through several types of signals. Among them is a prominent role in the way you manage communication, and empowering conversations specifically. People need Leaders, people search for Leaders, and they love to recognize leadership through the way you treat them;
3. Leadership, in its purest form, generates new leadership. This is an age old saying. But it makes a lot of sense to me right now. A true Leader is capable of igniting the light of greatness in other people. This can happen in many ways of course, and certainly conversations are one of the “highways” for this type of ignition.

Starting from there, in this article I invite you to reflect on a couple of powerful questions: how does leadership training, and in particular conversational leadership training really contribute to the development of a more abundant leadership?

What can we do to help to develop the idea that, at least in this field, “scarcity” can be defeated, and leadership can be seeded, nurtured and finally harvested without limits?

Seed communication, harvest Leaders

While reflecting on these intriguing questions, I came across to an interesting article (you can find it here) dealing with the never-ending fight between scarcity and abundance.

I totally share the point of the Walt Institute and the angle they suggest in the article about the correlation between mindset and leadership: “The way you think about the situation has a substantial impact on the way you handle stress, work with others, your level of resilience and the success you experience in the world”.

Specifically, one of the points they highlight in their five recommendations on how to cultivate an abundance mindset: “Appreciate your team and colleagues – let them know how much you value their contribution. The more genuine appreciation you give to individuals, the more positive influence you will have”.

This is where I focus every day and where I think leadership training can make a difference.

Somehow and from this perspective, the answers to the two above questions become quite straightforward: conversational leadership training, delivered in practical and actionable ways such as Digital Role Plays, can help on the development of a more abundant leadership by helping people improve on the way they appreciate, motivate, and drive their team through genuine and efficient communication.

Pursued consistently, this contribution can definitely support the virtuous development of abundance of leadership through a chain-like effect.

In writing this, however, I realize that some of you may raise some more, deeper questions that are worth considering:

• How the mastery of conversations turns people into Leaders?
• How conversations can help Leaders to develop new Leaders (a sort of “legacy of leadership”)?
• Finally, how all this can lead to a whole new level of energy, to a virtuous ecosystem where leadership itself spreads through generations while simply helping people feel appreciated and energized (a “community of abundance”)?

So, our reflection today starts here, let’s try to answer.

Well managed conversations boost leadership

It’s a fact. Leadership is not a skill. It’s a recognition from others when they perceive you as inspiring, reassuring, motivating, driving and all the other adjectives you may want to add to the list.

People around you perceive your leadership by observing and judging your results, your example and the way you communicate with them. What matters to them is how you care about them, how you help them, how you inspire and motivate them toward results that can be shared as a team.

Leadership is the recognized result of your efforts to improve yourself and the world around you.

It’s at the same time a destination and an endless path since leadership requires maintenance and you can always become a better version of yourself.

On the other side, a “conversation” is also not a skill. It’s rather the place where certain skills can be applied and where part of your leadership can flourish.
Conversations are very much connected to the concept of leadership in fact, because among any other leadership factors, they are the most suitable place where you get the most in touch with other people and where other people get close to your way of dealing with them and treating them.

The results of a conversation are almost always significant for how your leadership is perceived and very often such perception is so thin that you need a very high degree of self-awareness to understand the real results of your conversations and just as much level of confidence to be comfortable enough to deal with certain types of conversations,

But, in any case, a conversation transfers energy. Whether it is positive or negative energy is mainly up to you, to your confidence, to your communication skills and to your self-awareness in recognizing when it is time to adapt your approach. When the energy you transmit is positive, people start feeling better.

And the better they feel, the more they will be keen to follow-up in a positive way. This is one of leadership’s most important footprints.

Conversation after conversation, you will not only improve your fundamental communication skills, including the paramount self-awareness and confidence in dealing with critical conversations, but also expose your approach, your intimate core beliefs, your decisions, and your example.

You will expose yourself to the judgement of the people around you in a more intimate way, of course. Putting your effort in mastering the art of critical conversations will help to boost the way you are perceived, but also the impact of your work.

And if you do a good job, your leadership will grow in the eyes of the people you engage.

Energized people can become the next Leaders

Let’s raise the bar. It’s not just a matter of how other people perceive you. As a Leader or not. It’s not a beauty contest. It’s an opportunity for a higher aim.

Being recognized as Leaders offers the opportunity to amplify your message, whatever it is. At the same time, it carries the responsibility of working hard to seed and nurture the next generation of Leaders.

To make an organization really great, leadership must generate and spread in every role from every employee, every manager, every staff member.
Great Leaders are those who have the highest responsibility to leverage their skills and influence to develop all the people around them as well as help them to become new Leaders.

Once again, this responsibility must be met with several ingredients, but helping to spread the culture of empowering conversations by being a living example of it, is one of the most important.

In this way, you will not only nurture better-energized team members, but you will also inject into them, by your example, the best approach of all: listening and supporting others through conversations.

People around us continually judge the importance we give to the things we say by observing the things we do.
Leading by empowering conversation as the peak and moment at which any decision is made and of any action required is a great way to put conversations at the center of collective leadership development.

You will be surprised by the chain effect that generates from here. Those that are considered “critical” conversations will turn into nurturing and energizing moments, where everyone will be happy to stay.

And the collective mindset will move much faster from the “scarcity” to the “abundance” side of reality perception.

You may think of developing a conversation culture as a higher aim of getting recognized as a Leader. As Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel”. Developing a culture of empowering conversations is the ultimate way to develop your leadership’s legacy.

The next level

What can generate from this revolution – did you think even for one second about a revolution while reading these lines? Just imagine.

A world where “critical” (and avoidable) conversations turn into “empowering” (and enjoyable) conversations creating a world where Leaders develop new Leaders and where collective energy flows throughout organizations and teams.

A new community made of people who feel better by energizing other people through their communication skills and a well-maintained self-awareness; where Leaders can develop their legacy in a very practical, actionable and effective way for the benefit of the entire group.
A group of growing mindsets and Leaders supporting each other through intimate, clear, and consistent empowering conversations.

Our recommendation for you? Start now.
Start now to work on your skills that bring you closer to your employees.
Start now to ask yourself how self-aware you are about the way you manage what you may call “critical conversation”.
Start now to grow your confidence in this very important step towards true leadership.

There is a potential Leader inside each of us that can be discovered and recognized by others according to how much energy we are capable of conveying and igniting through conversations.

Conversations have superpowers

When Leaders start developing their skills around critical conversations, turning them into empowering moments, individual energy gets multiplied. Visions get shared and collective efforts are organized more efficiently to solve problems and leverage opportunities.
If we strive to think big and we imagine new ways to grow this potential, we start to talk about abundance.

Abundance of energy, of trust, of clarity, of influence. Abundance of better people.

People grow in an environment that naturally nurtures reciprocal respect, manages stress, dissipates fear and encourages each person to expand their own comfort zone. This is where each of us is naturally nudged to grow an abundance mindset.

Next time you think about growing the leadership of your organization, think about what type of investment you are pursuing toward encouraging the development of empowering conversation as a signature of your organization’s culture.

Next step

Wow, what a long reflection. Sorry if I went too long, but I think it was worth.

You may now be interested in learning more about ways to make all this possible in an efficient and measurable way.

In this article (“From Critical to Empowering Conversations: Let’s Change the World Using the C-FACTOR”), I discuss how practicing critical conversation makes all the difference between great Leaders and the rest of us.

If you are looking around to find the Digital Role Play solution that suits your needs, we explore some useful criteria in this article (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership”) to help you select wisely.

Please take some time to peruse our website. There is plenty of inspiring content including pre-recorded webinars and articles.

Of course, I would be delighted to continue this conversation with you, just schedule a 1-hour discovery call with us.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Written By

Andrea Laus

Andrea has 20 years of experience in the industry of digital learning. Since over 10 years now he designs and develop interactive simulations featuring video and AI to bring immersive and authentic digital experiences to leadership coaches worldwide.

Contact Andrea