Running head: HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ARTICLE SUMMARY

"Leadership is a Conversation" Summary

Erin N. Bosman

University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire

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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ARTICLE SUMMARY

"Leadership is a Conversation" Summary

The article Leadership is a conversation published in Harvard Business Review,

discusses the increasing importance of conversation with new technology and a new

generation of consumers. In order, to keep up with these changes and advances in

organizations, it is necessary for leaders to focus on how they are managing within their

organization and how they are presenting new information to their employees. Successful

leaders today are being more effective in communicating with their employees when

having face-to-face conversations and implementing a conversational sensibility

(Groysberg & Slind, 2012).

Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind identify four elements that are essential to

implementing conversation into an organization: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and

intentionality. Leaders should minimize the distances that separate them from their

employees and earn their employees trust through conversation to achieve intimacy. This

could be an emotional proximity rather than physical proximity. To accomplish

interactivity, leaders must promote dialogue through talking and connecting with their

employees to create an open minded, welcoming environment. Inclusion can occur when

personal conversation is used to enable all employees to become a part of the

conversation and to enable all employees to share their own opinions and contributions.

Finally, intentionality is achieved when a personal conversation has an agenda or set

goal. Employees are given the opportunity to contribute, to think openly, and to feel more

comfortable and close with their leader but are also given some idea of what their focus

should be (Groysberg & Slind, 2012).

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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ARTICLE SUMMARY

This article relates to our class, Introduction to Organizational Communication,

because the focus of organizational communication is examination of communication

within organizations. This article focuses on examining and enhancing communication

between leaders and their employees in an organization through more personalized

conversations. For example, my mom is the leader of a team for her career in risk

management and she has conversations with her employees and connects to them

emotionally by asking about their family and giving her team gifts or rewards

occasionally. She also sends them jokes and shares stories about our family that relate to

whatever their current focus is. Also, in the context of UW- Eau Claire being an

organization, I've had professors add emotional or personable ties to the subject content

to help students reach their goals more effectively. I have also experienced this as an on

campus employee, having daily face-to-face conversations with my supervisors. All of

these examples connect back to organizational communication and the types of

conversation that this article is supporting.

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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ARTICLE SUMMARY

References

Groysberg, B., & Slind, M. (2012). Leadership Is a Conversation. Retrieved January 27, 2016, from https://hbr.org/2012/06/leadership-is-a-conversation

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