By Andy Loignon, Diane Bergeron & Karissa McKenna
Center for Creative Leadership
Abstract
At the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), our research suggests that leadership is a social process. That is, leadership is neither a matter of one’s inherent traits nor something that’s bestowed based on one’s job title.
With leadership as a social process, one way to support leadership development is through conversational analysis, which captures the dialogue that unfolds among individuals as they strive towards shared outcomes. We developed a wearable technology system (i.e., HiFi, which is short for high-fidelity) and are pilot testing this system within one of CCL’s flagship programs – Leading for Organizational Impact (LOI).
In the LOI program for executives and senior leaders, HiFi plays a significant role in helping leaders work more effectively across boundaries, increase their self-awareness, and understand how measured behaviors impact their perceived influence and effectiveness. Leaders want concrete actions they can take to improve their leadership skills. Using this innovative technology and evidence-based metrics, CCL provides behavioral insight into how leader conversations directly result in specific outcomes. For example, we can quantify how much a leader’s boundary spanning conversations contribute to the amount of influence they are afforded by their colleagues. Such insight can be a provocative tool that leaders use to enact behavioral change upon returning to their own organizations. In service of better leadership, conversations are a key lever for leader development.
Citation
Loignon, A., Bergeron, D., McKenna, K. (2024). Leadership as Conversation: A New Tool to Support Leadership Development. Center for Creative Leadership. https://doi.org/10.35613/ccl.2024.2057
