Leadership Gatherings and Literature
Leadership Gatherings and Literature
Get together and read... and practice dialogue
I often hear and read about post-pandemic company get togethers. People come into town for a week from far away. These gatherings are a huge, rare opportunity for an organization, especially when the gatherings are of the companies’ higherups.
An opportunity for what though?
The debate about return to office (RTO) or not, rages on, built on idiosyncratic preferences and (possibly) power struggles. What’s glossed over is what it means to be present with another person or group of people. Presence is an overused word in many contexts. Presence of mind, being in the here and now. It’s easy to argue that technology allows for telepresence but not presence. What is missing on a phonecall or a zoom video call? I argue it’s a je ne sais qua. But that it is real. Bringing this group together is a meaningful choice, even if we fail to put our finger on why. I’m fine not knowing and honoring the meaningfulness of the act.
A bunch of higher ups in a company, from all over, together for good reason. How do we spend the time present with one another? Assuming a spectrum of quality, how might we spend it poorly? How might we spend it well?
I picture this kind of gathering involving lots of wasted time and excruciating smalltalk. Most often these gatherings involve someone talking at the group (1 to many) communication followed by no more than a handful of questions and answers (many to 1 with maybe some many to many chatter about the questions asked and answered). Those talks better be good because what we haven’t talked about is the return on investment (ROI). Saying the R of the ROI is a je ne sais qua, might be OK for me, but what’s not unknown is the actual cost of transporting, accommodating, and “paying” people to sit silently to listen to one person talk. When people talk about the cost/investment of a meeting by dividing the total compensation of all attending we can often get really large appallingly wasteful numbers. For a meeting like this, with mostly highly compensated higherups just sitting there, the information they’re imbibing must be wowingly good for the return to warrant the investment.
All companies have challenges they must meet both internally and externally, of their own making and of the outside’s making. This in person, presenceful gather is an opportunity to collectively meet these challenges, in theory. Starting by thinking about the challenges, better understanding the challenges together. Then, maybe later, sharing opinions, thoughts and ideas for how to meet the better understood challenges. And if the challenges are complex, the answers that these individuals might be paid to just have out of the box, might not work, and so, novel group-generated solutions might be needed.
Enter the art of “thinking together.” Thinking alone is fine. It is an artform as well. But thinking together I myself have seen only a handful of times in the wild. It is a sight to behold. It is nearly impossible to do at all let alone well. I’ve written about dialogue before here, here, here, and here so I won’t rehash all the things. I’ll summarize what I’ve written for this gathering of higherups as, it’s a unique opportunity to practice the art of thinking together (dialoguing), or, put even more simply, an opportunity for deep, rich, many to many communication (I’m picturing “hive mind”).
I hear the groans from my keyboard. “Deep heart to hearts? Emotions? Stories of my life and past and career? What’s next, trust falls? O em gee, I’m out of here.”
Lots of companies face the challenge of culture change or optimization. One possible use of this group’s time practicing the art of thinking together about a challenge is to deep dive into the culture as it is and as they might want it to be and/or as it ought to be to better meet the business challenges as presented by the macro economy and competition.
So what to dialogue about? The particular tradition of dialogue I read and write most about happens to have started with a lot of topicless dialogue, just talking about what comes up and taking things from there. I’m skeptical the spirit of this can be conveyed to such a large group sans context and a desire to deep dive into dialogue.
The best way to spend time as a group of higherups with manifold challenges you’re facing together is to practice the art of dialogue by reading and talking about a book or a short story. As I’ve written about here, I’m not alone. Professor Dr. James G March at Stanford’s Graduate School of business wrote:
The fundamental issues of leadership - the complications involved in becoming, being, confronting, and evaluating leaders are not unique to leadership. They are echoes of critical issues of life more generally. As a result, they are characteristically illuminated more by great literature than by modern essays or research on leadership.
In the class in question, he assigned Don Quixote and War & Peace. Not really realistic for this group and scenario. But a Shakespeare play, a short story, a short novel even, are all, in my opinion fair game. Read it on a plane. Book time for the group to veg out in a plush place like a club or library to relax and read with an emotional support beverage. It’s not as hard a problem as it might seem at a glance.
Why a book and not directly the challenge at hand? It’s neutral. Talking about a challenge or business decision head on immediately surfaces preconceived notions and triggers egos defending turf. The meaning of a Flannery O’Conner or Gabriel Garcia Marquez character’s actions, choices, and struggles is very hard to have similar pre-generated baggage about. There is magic in peeling the onion of a highly human, complex, layered creative artifact that isn’t work related.
What follows is a sketch of the chunks of time that’d be interspersed into the week of meetings and work and activities.
Day 1
Read a shortish book/story [As needed, likely many hours]
Get in groups of 5, ideally composed ahead of time [90 mins]
Ask the burning question/greatest curiosity as your “opening question”
Dialogue
Observe aloud, think aloud
Listen to different responses, reactions, perspectives
Try to arrive at the message or point or project the author is trying to convey to readers
Sometimes when you think you and the group are completely out of ideas/at the end of things to talk about, you’re at a major turning point where the real insights and discoveries are found. Must, push, through.
Tips and tricks
Try to avoid unfounded hunches
Try to root your hunches, opinions, statements in the text
Rather than outside information
If you find yourself talking a lot, talk less so others might have time and space to share their thoughts
Silence is great. It allows people time to think and take in what’s been shared
Come back to the large group [~30 mins]
Share surprises, reflections, questions answered
Day 2
Get in groups of 5 (same or different, shouldn’t matter)
Ask the following opening questions [60 mins]
What does the book/story have to teach us about [leadership | our day to day | our culture]?
What might the author say about [leadership | our day to day | our culture]?
Dialogue
Observe aloud, think aloud
Listen to different responses, reactions, perspectives
Come back to the large group [~30 mins]
Share surprises, reflections, questions answered
References
On Leadership by James G March