We have a big dream and that is to hold space for cracking some part of the nut of conversations and how they change us and our organizations. Hi Steve. Hi. Welcome to this first episode. We are here to talk about how changing conversations can change organizations. Yes. And we've realized that in many organizations, meetings or conversations are not what they are supposed to be. And sometimes we waste our time, we waste our energy, we waste our lives and people just show up. So we've decided to do something about that and share our insights on how you can leverage conversations to change the organization. And hopefully we will bring maybe two or three concrete ideas in every podcast that you can turn into something that makes your next conversation or your next meeting different. So through talking to some really cool business leaders, thought leaders, maybe some academics along the way, we'll be exploring together and together with listeners. The ambition is that this is the most curious place when it comes to exploring what at the end of the day. A few months ago, a conversation can be a conversation. A few months ago, you came up to me or we were in a conversation where you said there is something about conversations and how they change organizations. And should we not explore that? So many months later, here we are. But what was it that added up together to lead you to, okay, let's explore that? I think I started to see my life in organizations as a series of conversations. So suddenly I looked at my work life as a series of conversations that could either be really, really good or not so good. And it forced me to bring attention to how I show up to those conversations and how conscious I am in those conversations. So that was kind of my initial starting point. But you were also a little bit pissed off about something if we're honest about it. Yeah, I was and I am frustrated, to be honest, about the level of conversations that we have in organizations. Any organization almost I can think of, there is this feeling that we are wasting time. And we're wasting energy and we're wasting life, if you may, by being part of conversations or meetings, if you may, that doesn't really bring what they could bring. And if you think about it, and especially white-collar workers may be spending, I would say, 80, 90% of their time in meetings, conversations. It just, for me, it's almost like physical, painful to think about the waste of energy and the waste of human potential. So I am a little bit, not pissed off, but I have a big dream on behalf of us as leaders to change that. Yeah. And the perspective I'm coming from, which when you brought this topic up to me, you know, bearing in mind, you know, bearing in mind that there are so many clever people, both young people coming out of uni or people who've been in the workforce for a long time. But what happens when people come out of uni, which is something that I've maybe been witnessing a little bit closer in the last few years, is that you come into the workplace and you're super energized and you kind of have so much energy to save the world to make a difference in the world. And then what happens when you've been there for a few years is that you kind of, this energy gets stripped away by something. And my experience and my hypothesis would be that the conversations that we're in have a role to play in terms of that energy being stripped away as well. So when you came to me with that sort of question, should we not look into this? You know, I thought, yeah, let's do that. And let's take advantage of this really cool community of people around us as well who know something about this topic and explore it together with them. So were there some people or some conversations that you have had that specifically led you down this track as well? Yeah, there were several. I think the starting point for me was reading a book called Chasing Daylight. And it was written by the former CEO of KPMG way back 15, 20 years ago. And he got diagnosed with an inoperable brain cancer and was told that he had 100 days left to live in. And he canceled all his meetings or conversations. And he committed to himself that he would every day create a magic moment in a conversation with someone. And he started to do that. And he started to do that. And he got more and more into it and ended up by having several, you could say, magic moments that he took responsibility for creating every day. And he ended up concluding that the last 100 days of his life were by far the most meaningful that he had lived. And he was thankful for the fact that he got the chance to create these magic moments. And for me, it was just a reminder of, okay, would it be possible to commit to that broadly speaking and own the responsibility for creating, he called it magic moments. You could call it a great conversation, whatever. And I think it is. And I think when you start looking at it, at that granularity, we realize that the greatest gift you can give any human being is your 100% presence in the given moment. Like give the person you meet. Like give the person you meet your absolute best energy. Even if it's just a, you know, very, very short. It can be a, just look in the eye or it can be a longer conversation. If, if you are there with that ambition and commitment, things change. Yeah. When you, when you say that, you know, you can just look at someone and that that is a touch point. And I guess in some ways, as we try to define what a conversation is, we're kind of thinking that that also counts as a conversation, you know? Yeah. Conversations everywhere. Yeah. And, and if you look at it from this lens that we're exploring now, you, you could even argue that you are never not in conversation. So you're always in conversation with someone or something. And for me, it's a, it's a, it's a healthy way of reminding myself that I'm interacting with the world. And I need to, I need to help myself do that in the, in the best of ways. And by thinking of it in a way that you're in conversation, you also have a choice of how you conduct yourself and what you, what you choose to do with each of those moments. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Practically speaking for me, it means that I, I then need to ask myself, what type of conversation do I want in this given touch point? So it, it, it offers me. It's a perspective where I get a perspective where I get on the balcony and before I just go into something, I, I, I reflect upon what type of conversation would I like to be part of here. And then I take my part of creating that conversation. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. But just the fact that I think about what type of conversation should we have here does something. And we can get further along into that in, in, in a little while as well. Cause I think, you know, that is one of the exciting things about conversations is that they're accessible to everybody in the organization. And, and that leads me to, to one of the three points that we've kind of been dancing around for a little while. The first one being that organizations are conversations. So if we break it down, you know, of course organizations are people, but what do we do to, to connect between the islands of each individual. So that's a really interesting take, I think. But what, what led you to, to sort of think about it in that way? I think for, for me, the starting point was actually the realization that change is changing conversations. So the way change acts, actually manifests is in a change conversation. So if you've changed something, a conversation will have changed, or at least that's a good measure for the amount of change that you, that you do. And it goes for any change you can think of. You, you can think of it in the context of a conversation you need to change. And it makes it very practical and, and you, uh, accessible to everyone because everyone has a has the power to change a conversation. So for me, this realization that change is not something, you know, a plan and a Gantt diagram, change is a much more organic, um, conversational thing, really. We'd like to think of it as a, as a, as a very structured kind of rational thing, but in essence, it's a dance, it's a conversation. And therefore we need to, we need to equip ourselves with both the capabilities, but also the mindset of, being great, uh, being great, uh, conversation holders. Yeah. It, it, it's, it's exciting that it, that it is accessible to all. And I, I think we were inspired quite recently by this term that, you know, smallest, biggest, and that conversations are the smallest, biggest thing that we could leverage or that we could play with when it comes to change. Um, and in the process of, of changing a conversation of, of changing a conversation of, of going in and thinking, should I try to do this slightly differently? We're actually changing ourselves along the way, changing our mindsets and, and the actions that, that follow. Um, and that's what this is really all about. Yeah, because it, it, it, it also sets you free somehow, because if you allow yourself to think about what type of conversation do we need here and how should I, what kind of role should I play in this? That's also a way of getting out of stereotyping yourself and, and always feeling that you have to take this or that role. There's a tendency that we fall into the trap of, this is who I am and, and I'm not this, which is very often a limiting belief really. Um, so in this sense, um, um, I'm, I'm, I'm offered the opportunity to step in to a conversation a little bit different than what I did yesterday. And for me, at least it's, it feels liberating also because I'm grappling with something that I can influence. So when I meet with someone for dinner somewhere, just the fact that I think about what type of conversation should we have, should we talk about your work, my work, should we talk about who are you and what made you who you are? Or should we talk about, you know, just thinking, about that makes me show up differently? In essence, what we are, what we're exploring here are two different levels or of conversations, meaningful conversations in our everyday and in every, in our everyday at the workplace as well. Uh, and being able to influence that. Uh, and being able to influence that. Uh, and then from an organizational perspective, trying to maybe pinpoint the conversations that you might want to change if you want to make a transformation happen in a certain area. So these are two big areas that we're going to try to explore in this podcast series, um, with the likes of, uh, business leaders like Mass Nipper, um, and others and thought leaders, um, and others and thought leaders, David White, Priya Parker, and any others that we find who really have something cool to, to, to say on this topic. And, but this is, this is a explorative journey. We're not coming here saying that we have the answers to anything. We were coming here saying we're super curious and, and we think we're in a good position to be asking some cool questions. But we, but we, but we, but we are saying that it's, it's, it's, it is a missing element in many leaders toolbox, putting attention to the potential in changing conversations or, or doing a meeting makeover in your organization where you bring awareness to what could our meetings be and how do we train our people to create super meaningful touch points. That art or science, that art or science, if you may, is very often underestimated. And, and very often we don't, it's only recently we started to train people in real conversations. So we just take it for granted that if you're human, you can engage in meaningful conversations with other people. That's actually not the case for most of us. We need to train new things. We need to be, much more curious. We need to listen with like, almost like an, an intimate act, like listening, really listening instead of waiting for your next opportunity to say something. We need to train ourselves to ask questions to which we don't have the answer so that we inviting other people to co-explore something together and where we're creating something that no one knows. And all of these skills are very often not given to us deliberately by anybody. And I think there is something in, in, in bringing awareness to this. Yeah. So while we will be exploring some of the bigger thoughts on conversations and how they change us and our organizations, we will also try to get kind of practical, um, within each episode so that people who are listening can also take something away straight into there every day and test something out. Cause that's the other thing is that really we'll just need to be experimenting with this for, for some time. Yeah. And I got, I got a lesson a few years ago, uh, from, from, uh, a musician called Peter Bastian, who is unfortunately no longer with us, but before he died, he, he shared with me, um, his, you could say blueprint for what is a great conversation. And his reference point is being a musician. So creating music and art together with other people, which is very equivalent to what you would do in a management group when you have a management meeting, or at least you could use that metaphor. And what he taught me was that there are three things that really defines whether you're creating art together or whether you're just going through the motions. The first one is that he made me aware that it only takes one with the motions. And so he had less ambition, uh, in the, in the, in the, in the room for us to play average. So we all have to share an idea about what is it that we want to do together. So, so a big dream is, is number one. Number two is I need to, and everyone needs to be super aware of what they are giving to this conversation. What are they bringing? What is my gift into this conversation? What is my role in this conversation? And I need to commit to give my absolute best. And I need to commit to give my absolute best. And I also need to practice. So I show up in the, in the best of ways. That's, that's number two. Number three is maybe the most interesting part. And that was that you need to have an awareness on how to make the others better in the conversation. So besides playing my instrument at my very best, I need to do it with, uh, consciousness where I also make the other participants play to their best. So that in the best of world, we all play better together than we could have played individually. And, and for me, that was kind of, it was easy for me to apply that to a conversation for myself, because I can literally now think about my ambition on behalf of the meeting. I can think about what is my gift into this. And I can think about how do I make the others. And I can think about how do I make the others play better. So, so I think we can break this down actually to something actionable. So that is creating art is having those three elements in place. So we can use that framework to talk about this podcast as well. So we have a big dream and that is to, to hold space for cracking some part of the nut of, conversations and how they're going to be. And the mastery that, that we will be bringing is that Steve, you've been working in organizations for 25 plus years, um, and in and out of loads of different organizations. And I also know that you have, uh, have been focusing on this topic in your personal life as well in, in, in, in various forms. So you'll be bringing that to the table, right? Yes, I will. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a geek in this space. I mean, and, and, and maybe I've gone too far. I mean, when I, at my 50th birthday, I, I was, I was generating these cards to inspire a real conversation between people that might not know each other really well, but, but I'm really, I don't like shallow conversations. I, I, I really want conversations that are meaningful. And I, I'm perfectly aware that meaningfulness is different from human to human, but, but you can at least have the ambition of saying, okay, can we talk about this rather than just collapse into a shallow conversation, a small talk conversation? There is space for that and it's all good, but I would like to push that. So, so I'm doing that in, in, in, in a, I always think about, even if I'm going to a party somewhere, I'm thinking about what would I like to talk about? And which conversations would it be cool to have? So I'm a little bit of a geek. Great. And I'm looking forward to you, you bringing that part and, and I'll be bringing questions and curiosity and holding the space for that. And, and to be honest, we've not done a podcast series before, so we're no experts, but we'll be, we'll be giving this our best shot, inviting really cool people. And as to the third point, which is, you know, how do we play off each other? We are going to just try our best to focus on the topic at hand, the questions as, as the primary focus make space for the really interesting perspectives from our guests. And otherwise we'll just play and see what, what happens. Let's do it. Thank you.