harvard business review article
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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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