The annual Lessons in Leadership series returns this Spring and features Fred Dust’s new book Making Conversation: Seven Essential Elements of Meaningful Communication. Each session in our 2021 Lessons in Leadership series will be facilitated by dynamic speakers and will draw from key themes in Dust’s book, engaging and inspiring attendees with strategies and tools to foster more meaningful conversations.

Conversations are one of the most fundamental means of communicating we have as humans. At their best, conversations are unconstrained, authentic and open—two or more people sharing thoughts and ideas in a way that bridges our individual experiences, achieves a common goal. At their worst, they foster misunderstanding, frustration, and obscure our real intentions.

In his practice as a designer, Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to be a way to design conversation itself with intention and purpose, while retaining its artful and playful qualities.  Making Conversation codifies what he learned and outlines the four elements essential to successful exchanges: Commitment, Creative Listening, Clarity, and Context. Learn how these four elements, taken together, form a set of resources anyone can use to be more deliberate and purposeful in making conversations work, and examine how we can come together to tackle difficult topics and bridge our individual experiences to achieve better communication.

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