122 - The Importance of Conversation in Leadership and Change - Marsha Acker

Marsha Acker is a coach who specializes in executives and leadership teams. She has a background in tech and software engineering as well as degrees in those fields. Her career eventually led to increasing leadership positions where she struggled with the people side of leadership. About 20 years ago, Marsha began a process to become a better leader and eventually transitioned into working with leadership teams and coaching.

 

Key Takeaways:

• Leaders should take the time to hear different viewpoints, even if it may be a lot of work. It can shape and shift the thinking of all parties involved and lead to a shared understanding of the business picture.
• No one person can have the full picture, and it's valuable for everyone to hear one another's perspectives.
• Individuals can feel like change is being done to them and that their voice doesn't matter. Effective leaders listen for all four actions in a conversation and prompt for any missing action.
• Having a structural language to analyze conversations can help leaders understand what is happening differently.
• Conversations can be looked at in a morally neutral language to see what is happening differently. There are four actions that can happen in a conversation - follow, oppose, bystand, and support.
• Effective conversations have all four actions voiced. Ineffective conversations leave one or more of these actions out.

You can connect with Marsha through linkedin: linkedin.com/in/keeleyhubbard

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Host Contact Information - Chris Freeman

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