Empowering Conversation in the Workplace and the Knowledge Café
Introduction to Knowledge Cafe
Conversation is arguably our most powerful organizational tool, but we largely take it for granted and fail to capitalize on it.
The power of conversation lies in its flexibility and adaptability to address a wide variety organizational issues.
- Conversation can be used purposefully to many ends including:
- Improve understanding & sense making
- Build relationships
- Transform leadership
- Spur innovation
- Surface opportunities
- Explore possibilities
- Reveal hidden problems
- Solve problems
- Break down departmental silos
- Identify risks
- Share knowledge
- Improve decision-making
- Give people a voice
- Improve engagement
- Generate ideas
- The potential for every work-related conversation in our organizations to drive performance, transfer learning, and build relationships is immense.
But no one ever teaches us how to convene and engage in such conversations and so we haphazardly bumble along and squander one of our most powerful human abilities.
We need to consciously “empower conversation" in the workplace.
The Knowledge Café is a powerful conversational method for achieving this.
empowering conversation - the act of working together to give each other the confidence, power and skills to hold meaningful or high impact conversations in the workplace.