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In this episode, Sarah Tenisi speaks with Craig Weber, author of Conversational Capacity and Influence in Action. He is on a mission to create more healthy, engaged, and adaptive organizations.
Craig’s books provide concrete actions you can take to transform your company, and even your personal relationships.
Listen in as Craig shares the keys to building up your conversational capacity and ability to produce psychological safety in the workplace. He discusses the evolution of managerial styles from a widespread acceptance of a command-and-control approach to one that embraces more creativity, autonomy, and flexibility.
Craig dives deep into the mindset and skillset required to optimize your conversational capacity as a leader, as well as how to complement the power of high conversational capacity with high diversity in your organization to maximize productivity and engagement.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
● [01:33] Defining “conversational capacity”
● [04:00] Operationalizing emotional intelligence
● [05:29] How Craig found himself on his current path
● [07:23] How philosophies and practices toward building effective organizations have shifted in the past decade
● [12:22] Promoting autonomy appropriately
● [17:34] Finding the conversational “sweet spot”
● [21:02] The benefit of having a “trigger journal”
● [28:36] Why good intentions do not necessarily lead to good actions
● [30:50] How to start building conversational capacity in your organization
● [31:56] The role of mindset in building conversational capacity
● [35:11] Achieving high conversational capacity and high diversity
● [36:23] Building your conversational capacity skillset
● [41:55] The future of work as conversational capacity enters the mainstream
Key quotes:
● “Conversational capacity is a discipline, and just like any discipline, practice is key.”
● “Conversational capacity is, in essence, operationalized emotional intelligence.”
● “It doesn’t do any good to spend a ton of trouble getting the smartest people you can find into your business if you can’t access their smarts when it matters.”
● “Nothing lowers conversational capacity more predictably than the presence of authority.”
Links:
https://weberconsultinggroup.net/
https://weberconsultinggroup.net/what-is-conversational-capacity-and-why-does-it-matter/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/conversational-capacity-psychological-safety-craig-weber/
