A creative conversation transfers ideas from one mind to another, it also allows you to reveal and remove all obstacles in the way of making ideas and inventions happen. It even allows you to see opportunities, realise possibilities and easily solve real life, personal and business problems.

Such a conversation feels as relaxing as a Sunday afternoon in your pyjamas.

But today, holding creative conversations, sometimes appears daunting. In the search engine and instant messaging dominated era of immediate answers, we have no time (read patience) to pay attention, listen, inquire, or differ in ways that let conversations unfold slowly, never mind creatively.

It’s not that we’ve forgotten how to hold genuine conversations. The problem is much deeper. We’ve stopped learning how to hold a genuine conversation.

Educator Paul Barnwell, in his post for The Atlantic, wrote,

“[C]onversational competence is the single most overlooked skill we fail to teach. Kids spend hours each day engaging with ideas and each other through screens, but rarely do they have an opportunity to hone their interpersonal communications skills…… Is there any 21st-century skill more important than being able to sustain coherent, confident conversation”?

The good news is we can all learn it. All this ability demands is the ability to be observant, having a core skill-set and following the four key steps in the generative discovery cycle.

In our interactive and practical one-hour workshop, I will share our approach to generating safe, collaborative and constructive creative conversations that emerge opportunities, realise possibilities, and solve real life, personal and complex problems.

Bring along your own unique set of complex business, team or even personal problems to playfully practice simple techniques & learn how to;

• Experiment with authentic, candid & safe ways to empathize, engage, inquire & question, and really listen to one another.
• Differ, deviate & provocate to maximize diversity, and flow through bold dialogue & debate confidently.
• Collectively generate creative ideas & innovative solutions to real complex business, team and personal problems.

Knowing how to be contrary, provocative & safely disruptive is key to building collaboration & innovation across locations, geographies, internet devices & demographics.

It’s about allowing people to work together anywhere, and to communicate and learn, creating a good time to explore the possibilities that arise from this.