Art of Convening and Book

Advancing Your Convening Skills: What's In It for You?

by Rachel Harris

Once you have gained and practiced the skills from the Art of Convening, the learnings and processes don't stop! Leadership is an ongoing learning process full of new information every day. Convening skills support engaged, effective leadership. In order to see the most improvements in your convenings, how do you continually advance your skills? It's always about intent; sometimes it takes a little extra courage. Below, we provide insight to an encounter with one of our clients and how we helped them further their convening skills.

A client recently contacted CPL for a consultation on developing and conducting a meeting for 300 people.

Using Convening to Transform Company Culture

With family in town, I'm thinking about how to create a positive future for all people, whether their path takes them into the business world or not.  An equitable workplace is on my mind.  I worry that it might not be possible to spark shifts in company cultures that dissolve the glass ceiling and create inclusion for people looking to advance.  And, I hope that such corporate transformations are already happening.  

This is why convening matters. Convening provides a platform for inner and outer work, critical to knowing self as an effective and enduring leader.  At the upcoming TLC-Twin Cities, Heartland will convene a conversation inspired by news of the 5th Annual Minnesota Census of Women in Corporate Leadership.  

In this important annual conversation - relevant for anyone who is making forward-thinking business decisions, has a daughter or son or knows someone rising through the ranks, Heartland and St. Catherine University will relay how company culture impacts women’s corporate advancement in Minnesota and why having men at the table matters.

June 10th will be a day of rich learning and action-oriented outcomes. We’d love to see you there.

Are you an accidental change leader?

Today a colleague shared challenges of supporting HR managers who are faced with leading change initiatives. The challenge is that often they are not trained on how to lead a team through this change. The irony is that HR staff is generally seen as the in-house expert on managing interpersonal relations. 

Recognizing Heartland's talents for coaching executives engaged in large-scale change initiatives, such as implementing new IT systems or external partnership projects, Heartland Consulting

was called upon to convey wisdom to HR managers.

Heartland will now collaborate with Frank for the 2016 HR Transformation Day in March. Stay tuned for more details!

   

Meanwhile, we'd love to hear how you are navigating change. If you are in the midst of an accidental transformation, call us at 612-920-3039. 

 

Yours,
The Heartland Team 

Powerful Gatherings: It’s The Art of Convening

Do you call meetings, schedule meetings, or do you convene meetings?  Craig & Patricia Neal say that convening has become an essential leadership skill in today's world. It is “an expression of intentional
leadership and transformation.” Craig & Patricia created the Art of Convening, as a practice for holding authentic meetings, gatherings, and conversations. You can improve outcomes, results, and connections leading to positive transformation of your organization, teams, and communities. Before your next leadership gathering, join Cheryl Esposito with Craig & Patricia Neal to learn the true Art of Convening!

Friday November 6, 2015 10:00am Pacific Time

Cheryl Esposito welcomes Craig and Patricia Neal, co-founders of The Heartland Circle and co-authors of The Art of Convening: Authentic Engagement in Meetings, Gatherings, and Conversations.To listen, connect here.

A Multi-faceted Approach to Leadership

Last week a client called and inquired about team building and collaboration for their siloed organization. They wondered how to achieve collaboration when the current role structure demanded highly individualized, almost expert-like staff.

Our Heartland Consulting team began with focusing on employee capacities and quickly realized the organizational structure bore as much relevancy as any staff training.

We looked for solutions. Taking into account the culture of the organization, one option was to apply the Heartland's Art of Convening: 9 Steps to Collaboration principles in small, representative groups. We also
considered a complementary option of individualized coaching. The Convening principles would bridge the static, siloed organizational culture and the changing demands for collaboration placed on staff.

There is an art to building collaborative teams while simultaneously supporting an employee's individualistic nature. Applying Convening principles would solve both challenges. 

Ultimately, we chose to coach small groups using the Art of Convening principles and offer individualized coaching. This multi-faceted approach fed both the process for capacity building and the practice of interpersonal communications rooted in collaboration.

We'd love to hear your leadership success stories! Please reach out to us by email or call us at 612-920-3039.

Yours in leadership,
The Heartland Team