Today I talk to Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former Chief People Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation and currently part of the faculty for the Leadership programs at the Full Circle Group.

Together, we unpack the ideas of Conversational Leadership. In a conversation, there are usually at least two points of view, and movement forward comes through a give and take. The world asks things of us, and we ask things of the world...what we get is the conversation that is our lives. We can demand all we like of the world, we will get what we get. And just the same, the world will never get all it asks of us - we get to choose.

Leadership in organizations is absolutely accomplished through dialogue - leading through dictatorial fiat is not a sustainable model. That old mode of command and control is losing its hold on the world.

Gayle presents us with this idea of leadership as sensing and steering - of getting data and feedback from the world and “turning up the volume on what works”. Feedback loops are the essence of conversation and leadership.

The image brought to mind my episode with Aaron Dignan, founder of the Ready who asks leaders if they would like to ride a bicycle where they get to steer or one with a fixed steering wheel - you can only point the bike in one direction and keep going.

Everyone always chooses the steering bike, the ability to make little corrections to your course, rather than stay in a line….and yet most organizations are led like a fixed bike, with an annual budgeting and strategy process that isn’t conversational or adaptable mid-course.

In terms of the Conversation Operating System at the core of my book, this is about Cadence - having a lively pace of feedback, rather than a slow or non-existent one.

Gayle and I also dive into the importance of Narrative in leadership. Data is critical, but data, in the end, doesn’t tell us anything. We tell stories with data.

There are at least two ways to shift a story - one is with new data and the other is with a new story. And for this, Poetry is a surprising tool. Poetry can give us new words, the seeds for a new story.

My interview with Nancy McGaw from the Aspen Institute is another conversation to juxtapose here - she talks about poetry as a profoundly simple way to start a group conversation with depth.

Gayle offers that:

Poetry helps me tap into a deeper well, helps me get grounded so that when I go on with my day, I'm much more able to be responsive and not reactive.

 

Gayle reads us one of her husband’s poems, Mameen, which I’ll place in the notes for you to read along with. (It might help to mention that Gayle’s husband is the rather famous poet David Whyte!)

Gayle also helps us understand how to unpack poems with groups and help the words go deeper - starting with a story about why it’s significant to you or allowing people to choose a line that resonated most with them and to share it with another person.

Leaders need to be intentional in how they communicate with the world...and that’s work, to design all of those conversations. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and you use it to deepen your leadership.

Mameen

Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature

even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith

among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.

Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed

by circumstance, how great reputations

dissolve with infirmity and how you,

in particular, stand a hairsbreadth from losing

everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path to the north,

the way you came, as if seeing

your entire past and then south

over the hazy blue coast as if present

to a broad future.

Recall the way you are all possibilities

you can see and how you live best

as an appreciator of horizons

whether you reach them or not.

Admit that once you have got up

from your chair and opened the door,

once you have walked out into the clean air

toward that edge and taken the path up high

beyond the ordinary you have become

the privileged and the pilgrim,

the one who will tell the story

and the one, coming back

from the mountain

who helped to make it

Links and Resources

 

More about Gayle on the Web

 

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

 

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity by Jennifer Garvey Berger  

 

Nancy McGaw on the Conversation Factory on Leading Through Asking

 

Naomi Shihab Nye on Kindness: https://poets.org/poem/kindness

 

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

 

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

 

like a shadow or a friend.

 

More About Gayle

Gayle believes the world needs more leaders who are “able for” what lies ahead, who have developed the capacity to meet the complexity of global challenges. Working in the field of leadership for the past two decades, it has become abundantly clear to her that there are the visible, tangible, practical, and pragmatic aspects of leadership that need to be executed on a day-by-day basis, and then there is the work of caring for the the spaces between people, of seeing complexity and interdependencies, of understanding relationships and power and all the ephemeral things that still excise tremendous influence on the day-to-day behaviors of people. Thus it is the invisible work of leadership, the work of showing up, setting culture, and creating spaces for others to thrive that is the focus of her work. She believes in meeting people and systems wherever they are, and then developing people to work with the full range of who they are to meet the full complexity of the organizational system and operating ecosystem, working with the intangible but critically necessary human substructures to move a strategy forward.

Gayle Karen Young is a cultural architect and a catalyst for human and organizational development. She comes from a rich organizational consulting background with both corporate and nonprofit clients. She was in process of becoming a Zen monk when she became an executive instead, taking on the role of Chief Culture and Talent Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation (CHRO for Wikipedia and its sister free-knowledge projects) until early 2015 when she joined Cultivating Leadership. From high-level strategic thinking to practical implementation, her skills include leadership development, change management, facilitation, training, strategic communications, speaking, team building, and personal and organizational transformation.

Gayle holds a Masters degree in Organizational Psychology.

Gayle is passionate about global women’s issues and supporting women in leadership. She is also very much a geek that loves attending Comic-Con and reading science fiction, which inspires a passion for technology and its leverage for societal change. She is keenly interested in the intersection of technology and human rights and supports futurist humanitarian causes. She lives in both San Francisco, California, and Whidbey Island, Washington.

 

Full Transcript on the Conversation Factory: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/conversational-leadership-gayle-karen-young-whyte