The Role of Conversation and Mundane Talk in Facilitating a Climate for the Social Change - Coursework Example

The Role of Conversation and Mundane Talk in Facilitating a Climate for the Social Change and Involvement Name Institution Course Lecturer Date A Brief Overview Conversation and mundane talk are the most powerful and natural method of communication that can enable change in any organisational setting. They play different roles in facilitating a good climate for social construction of involvement and change. They allow different people, especially leaders to encourage understanding, context and shared meaning for positive transformational outcomes. Communication is a great tool for change because it only requires a shift in thinking and understanding. Guided conversation is semi-directed and designed to share insights, create understanding and new knowledge. Involving conversation in the change process implies that language enacts the change effect which is very crucial in every organisational setting. Change in organisations can be triggered by various conversation forces that can be acting within the external or internal environment of the organization. The change can be episodic or continuous. Continuous change can be utilised to clarify the idea of change as ‘becoming’ to encourage people within an organisation to work towards it. Realistic vision is very important to drive the efforts of change because it is accomplished over time. For instance, the process of change involves carrying out various activities whose outcome can be evaluated within a given period of time. Lewin’s field theory proposes that change can be facilitated by increasing and keeping up the forces promoting it to unfreeze the current situation and reduce all resisting forces (Etzol, p.56, 2008). To Encourage All People Relate Conversation and mundane talks focus more on relational perceptive on change as opposed to the Cartesian view. They help different people in an organisation know the assumptions that underlie the social construction of change. The relational perceptive on change encourages the existing individuals to relate with other people to make change socially. Conversation connects the various level of analysis to make changes in organisational settings. The levels are individual, organizational and group analysis. The different levels achieve their effectiveness through individual factors such as problem-solving styles, abilities and skills on the individual level. The group level is dependent on procedures and clarity of roles and goals, while the organizational level is dependent on conversations that are associated with different working entities such as structure and culture. Mundane talks focus on dialogic communication where different individuals in the same working level may exchange ideas. It encourages willingness of what others have to say. It is very important because it appreciates the fact that people are unique making it possible to make change in different viewpoints. This encourages multiple sources of ideas in terms of experiences and narratives and views lack of sameness in a positive way (Charles, p.33-35, 2011). To Present the Change and Involvement in a Friendly Way Language plays a very significant role in managing change due to social construction that involves the lives of individuals making up an organization. Narratives have a significant role in interpreting the context of change. There are two types of narratives; voice and cultural narrative. They have various roles in explaining both organizational and situation to construct change. They are usually applied in social context because they can strengthen or construct it. Conversations bring both the background and history into the present by reworking, re-accentuating and responding to past conversations and anticipate the future ones. This accumulates a stable mass of consistency and continuity to objectify and maintain reality. The conversation may be based on different backgrounds that include complacent background, resigned background and cynical background. The complacent background is constructed on the basis of historical success associated with change while complacent resistance conversation stresses on the talk of relative satisfaction and comfort if the things are changed in the way they are done. Resigned background is associated with historical failure where things went wrong in an organization. Its talks aim at letting the people involved know that they are fast changing for the better. The cynical background is constructed from historical failure that was vicariously or directly experienced through narratives and stories of other experiences. They initiate talks about the cause of failure and provide a way of doing things differently to achieve better results (Joseph p.24-30, 2002). To Make Sure All Key Players Are Involved Pre-existing and current stories are used to combine the present and the past to make workers cope with the changes. The pre-existing stories encapsulate past experiences and relate them to the present. They simplify spin of events and remain open to revision, while the current stories recite the pre-existing stories to make and organize sense of the present. The narrations can cover different aspects such as job demands, social supports and organisational constraints with an aim of explaining how they relate. These stories and narratives are devices that focus more on common issues and themes that link a set of ideas and a series of events along the expected change. They explore and explain the accepted social ways of involvement, accepting change and being open to change. They are recreated every day through various conversations that occur at levels of the organization to make sure the interests of everyone affected by the change are covered. They are even more effective if the change agents and people narrating them are cautious and sensitive enough to use metaphors that put the current situation into context. Mundane talk will let the change agents know how to enlist and identify discourses to support and advance the desired changes (marshak & Grant, p.5-6, 2011). To Formulate a New Theory of Understanding It aids in action research to formulate a new theory of understanding among workers. The action research involves various steps that include co-learning and learning to define a problem and its problems jointly, collecting, analysing and interpreting data. The data collected is very useful in discussing possible solutions, taking and implementing action and evaluating its possible consequences. Mundane talk and conversations are used to interpret any breakdowns or disruption that may be affecting the change process. The process is called organizing and it involves enactments, maintenance and selection of options to detect changes in identities that may result from new orders. Organising gives way to retrospective sense-making that interpret plausible stories or things that people have done in the past and prospective sense-giving that aim at creating readiness to help people construct. The sense making process interprets the specific breakdowns and disruptions to maintain the enactments and options. The difference between the enactment of orders and maintenance of potions displays the changes may occur in identities as a result of enacting new orders into the situation (Louwerse, p.247-255, 2014). To Analyse the Progress of Change and Involvement Conversations between senior and middle managers analyse the differences between the desired and actual performance. The gaps between the desired level and actual level are used to articulate the change message. It shows the full and partial readiness based on the capability of changing coupled with both low and high urgency. Conversations can be used to determine the capability of change through double-loop learning. It revisits the core values of the governing forces, actions and the consequences of mismatches or match. (William, Carolyn and Stephen, p.149, 2004) To Address the Resistance of Change Organisational conversations between different people address the possible resistance of change that results from assessments and personal experiences about the reliability of others. They try to alter the possible factors of resistance to win support. However, they can be less effective if the people involved fail to view resistance as a socially constructed reality, which is constructed by people who depend more on background conversations in areas where the change is being initiated. This means that change may take effect if positive mundane talks are encouraged among people of the same level. In addition, change will still occur without resistance if the issues raised during mundane talks are addressed properly. This is very important because background organizations can lead to resistance at social level which is hard to handle than the resistance at a personal level which s associated with personal differences. The resistance is likely to occur if it threatens the status quo in the society or if there is assessments of the situation and differences of understandings. The literature on resistance of change deepens when the people are facilitating the progress of change share homogeneous reality and the same objective. In general, the parties involved are likely to have divergent views and give different responses to reflect their misunderstandings about the change, individual characteristics and attributes along the way of the change (Ann, p.50-52, 2010). To Encourage Different Ideas Successful dealing with resistance is dependent on the ability to describe the source of resistance and represent it accurately to implement and choose strategies appropriate for overcoming and addressing that source. Talks handle the change in the individual and in the constructed reality where the individuals operate. The talks should be maintained and conducted keeping in mind that the participants are constructed in a different sense of their worlds and themselves to engage in different actions that depend on the reality in which they live. It presents a change of leaders as positively as a counter-image of managerial roles (Harvey et al, p. 64-70, 2010) To Portray Leaders as Facilitators of Change and Involvement Change of leaders is very important, especially if they were lacking in proactive attributes of flexibility and openness to new ideas which are essential for managing and creating change. Mundane talks and conversation try to clarify the counter image of leaders and their role in managing and leading the process of change. They allow leaders to initiate innovation and enact their role of controlling and directing change as facilitators. The significance and role of leaders in changing organisations have changed over the last two decades. They were previously presented as charismatic heroes who destroyed inflexible and rigid structures. This has, however changed and most of them are portrayed as conformists who are perceived as control and lacking in vision or adaptors rather than innovators. Conversations help in changing this view because they can portray leaders as change facilitators who are committed to empower employees and encourage even technological innovation (John, p.55-58, 2013). To Embrace Divergent Views of Change At times, they can be used to explore the relationship between making and leading change without embracing one-sided or simplistic models of change. The process begins by reviewing some of the existing management and leadership roles to identify various attributes used by change leaders and managers. It makes different aspects such as inspiring the vision of change, entrepreneurship changes, using power, experimentation, creativity, flexibility and adaptability, risk-taking, openness to new ideas and honesty that make change more effective. Openness to new ideas is considered as a characteristic attribute of change managers and leaders because some top managers and middle managers have got their positions by being dependable and predictable, making it hard for them to be open to new changes, especially if they have something to lose. However, the other people in lower positions are likely to be open to changes, especially if they have something to gain. (James and Barry, p.2-6, 2011) Conversations involving story telling portrays consultants as impression manager with very great convincing power to identify and encourage other people identify operation and accept the change to construct plot lines and character. This makes the story-making process act like a reflective act to display the consequences of action. (Ford, p.131-140, 1999) References Antaki, C. (2011). Using Conversation Analysis in Intervention Programmes for Aphasic Conversation. Applied conversational analysis: intervention and change in institutional talk (pp. 32-34). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Baker, A. C. (2010). Catalytic Conversations. Catalytic conversations: organizational communication and innovation (pp. 50-52). Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe. Davis, J. E. (2002). Rhetoric Language Arts & Disciplines. 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