Tana Paddock

People that are engaged with their organizations describe their work experiences in marked terms. They talk about how alive they feel, how creative and emboldened. They talk about how much they’ve grown through their work and how much they look forward to entering the organization each day, even when things are difficult or stressful. Not only are they highly engaged, they are supple and responsive to shifts in both their external and internal environments or job descriptions. During this session we will explore some of the key dynamics underlying this kind of engagement.

The objectives for this topic are to:

• Reflect on six of the most powerful practices that we have seen within engaging organizations.
• Explore what is possible within your own organization.
• Look at what you can do personally to contribute to this.

Discussion, debate, negotiation, and information exchange are the most common forms of communication in organizations, and although helpful in many ways, they rarely push us beyond our current paradigms of thought and action. This session is an introduction to dialogue, a more creative and collaborative mode of communication that increases our capacity to address complex organizational issues.

The objectives for this session are to:

• Understand what dialogue is and how it differs from other forms of communication.
• Practice specific behaviors that can help us move towards a more dialogue-based way of communicating.
• Consider ways of cultivating dialogue as a sustained organizational practice.