The Power of Conversation

August 10, 2010 2 Comments

In this 10 minute video, Jack Ricchiuto, a friend of IISC’s, successfully distills the four conversations that build community and gives us a glimpse into the shadow conversations that keep us from success.  Evidently influenced by Peter Block, Ricchiuto is part of a wave of organization and community builders that have been inviting us to look at our work from a different lens.

Jack names the following four conversations with power:

  • Dream Space Conversation – this is the possibility conversation, and many of us are familiar with vision exercises.  He says it is a conversation that takes us 20 years out, one generation.  He reminds us that the depth of our vision correlates with the depth of our passion, and he invites us to create spaces that facilitate the alignment of our dreams
  • Small Acts Conversation – I find this one to be a great corollary to the dream space conversation because it gets us talking about what we can do.  Given where we want to go, what is it that we can do right now?  I also like it because it gets us out of the trap of big plans, the fantasy games that we play when we try to project every step into an uncertain future.  This conversation gets us started, it allows for the early prototype.
  • Gifts Conversation – This one is the asset based conversation, the conversation that finds out what it is that each one of us brings to the table, what is it that we already have in our hands and how is it that we put it to work for our dreams?
  • Invitation Conversation – This is where we look around, we appreciate who we are and what we have and we decide who else to invite, who are the people that might want to be a part of this dream?

Jack also does a good job of pointing towards the shadow conversations, the ones that we are so used to having.  He describes the problem conversation; this is where we get stuck always talking about what’s wrong.  He talks about the “what are we missing” conversation, which is really where we find our excuses for not moving forward.  And in what might be his most provocative point, he talks about the “consensus conversation,” specially when we turn it into the “need persmission” conversation.  If a few of us want to experiment with a small act, let’s do it!  Let’s show it works!  Let’s let new options speak for themselves!

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