Dialogic from the Start: Contracting for Emergent Outcomes in Result Driven Organizations

Assuming that most leaders in organizations are results-driven and tend to have controlling leadership habits, when does it make sense to contract for self-organization and emergence and how do we do it?

Or practically speaking:

What are you selling and what is the client buying in an emergent process in which the desired outcomes are yet to be articulated and discovered? 

How do you do it – step by step?

In this course we will look at Dialogic OD, Emergent and Generative change projects and processes, through the lens of “creating the terms of engagement” that promote and enable this kind of work - the Contracting process.

A unique perspective of contracting as “the work” and not “pre-work”, work that takes place during the most formative and transformative stage of the dialogic work will be offered. Awareness  of self and others in the entry and beginning stage of the process will be highlighted and skills of developing an authentically dialogic presence from the start will be explored and practiced. To establish any consulting relationship, or in fact any lasting and generative relationship, we need a suitable and enabling formal and psychological contract for all parties.

Both the philosophy and the practice are widely  applicable to internal and external consultants, leaders, and managers who wish to practice working more dialogically in whatever they do.

The course will surface the paradoxes, teach the art and the craft and outline the basic elements of contracting, elaborating both on being and doing contracting dialogically. Embodied dialogic presence means not only a dialogic mindset but also being in authenticity, daring to be vulnerable, and developing a “covenant relationship” with your client/partners.

The course will be a conversational space in which your experience and questions will feed one another and I will share thoughts and insights drawing on my experience and recently published book Initiating Generative Change: Entry and Contracting for Emergent Outcomes in Result Driven Organizations, in the BMI Series in Dialogic OD.