Stop Talking and Start Listening!

When Ray Jorgensen meets with your team for a keynote or a full session, you will notice a striking difference from others in the leadership development field.

First, JLC does not hold “events.” The time you spend with Ray is not a once-and-done meant to be taken back and perused at some nebulous date in the future. The things you discover are designed to impact your life immediately, both inside and outside the workplace.

The reason? Ray’s more than 30 years of studying, discovering, and researching the way people communicate and understand information. The JLC method is based on what we call the “Three Leadership Edges.”

There are many ways to define what a leader is, but at its most basic, leadership is about communication. The Jorgensen Leadership Center and founder Ray Jorgensen are committed to demonstrating how leaders and teams can build dynamic relationships and produce amazing results using effective, powerful communication. Conversations that reduce workplace conflicts.

So let’s look at JLC’s Three Edges of Leadership.

Three Edges of Leadership

#1 Conversational Leadership:  Design and hold quality conversations that lead to quality thinking and quality results.

Note the word “design.” JLC emphasizes shifting from casual, unstructured conversations to intentional conversations. An awareness of what you are planning to say, and why, and an awareness of not just what the other person or people are saying, but what is behind the words. It is, fundamentally, the difference between hearing and listening. Communicating moves from free-form to disciplined.

Conversational Leadership helps you develop a capacity to engage in learning-based conversations that fosters reflection on deep assumptions and patterns of behavior, enabling consensus within your organization. We believe that quality conversations lead to quality thinking, which leads to quality results. Critical goals include:

• Learning and using proven Learning Conversation Guidelines.
• Developing strong individual communication skills and capabilities.
• Learning how to facilitate difficult conversations.
• Utilizing energizing and effective meeting protocols.
• Designing and facilitating meetings using the language of Conversational Leadership to produce desired changes in behavior of meeting attendees.
• Recognizing and using conversation as a disciplined practice to accomplish alignment in the system.
• Shaping “safely dangerous space” within which to communicate.

#2 Aspirational Leadership:  Lead from the Inside Out and enable your team to accomplish sustainable results.

This edge is focused on how to be a leader, and the intentional thinking that should lead decision-making. Points include:

• Creating a clear and compelling vision for yourself and the group you lead.
• Designing work activities in line with goals and visions.
• Learning how to portray your operating personal principles.
• Identifying your current reality.
• Identifying work that is not in alignment with goals and taking steps to eliminate those work efforts or mitigate their negative effects.
• Learning how to identify and help create desired conditions in teams or departments.

#3 Systems Dynamics:  Leading from the Outside In.

When we recognize that all organizations are living systems and interdependent, we can be more agile in managing the complexities inherent in human interactions. Points and goals include:

• Identifying the forces holding you back — addictive loops and poor transfer of knowledge and communication leading to toxic workplaces.
• Being able to use a common language that helps communicate complexity and interdependency within the system.
• Seeing the system as living, and thus understanding how peoples’ behavior affects every part of the system.
• Understanding how mental models affect your thinking and that of others in the system; and how these mental models affect the impact of the systemic behavior and desired results.
• Leading through your strengths while marginalizing forces that impede.
• Aligning your thinking so your leadership responses and actions naturally flow in the direction you want most.

How does JLC make conversions effective and enhance leadership?

So, now you know the conceptual framework behind Ray Jorgensen’s leadership development work. And although some of this language may seem philosophical (it is), Ray will make the esoteric feel comfortable and usable. More importantly, JLC does not come to you with a set of dictums, perfect answers, or one-size-fits-all plans. Our sessions don’t have you pulling out a training manual! We focus on creating quality conversations. We come to you to help you learn.

Ray comes from a space of learning — we ask you what seems to be going on with the team. We find out together what the issues are and customize, create and blend together our knowledge so we focus on tangible, real-life things.

JLC does not hold lectures, and our keynotes are designed to be as interactive as possible — they simply must be, or our concepts won’t work. We often say “wisdom is in the room.” We do not come to keynotes or seminars with “this is our agenda.” We don’t dictate, we facilitate.

So if you are ready to undertake a journey of leadership development, one that will transform how you and your team communicate, and thus enhance your organization, give us a call. Our keynotes are a great way to get started and let you see how really different Ray Jorgensen and the Jorgensen Leadership Center really is. And when you are ready for a powerful, two-day event that will transform your leadership, our Sessions are available.