Practice? Podcast

"High Tech. Human Touch" is a logo of Walker Group led by co-CEO Jessica Rich. Dave knows human intelligence thrives there, even as they know and apply AI, because Walker Group is a registered Benefit Corporation and the first Perpetual Purpose Trust-Owned Company in Connecticut. They promise their practitioners a stable foundation for a long career. Jessica has been with Walker for over 22 years and has no plan or reason to lead elsewhere. 

Dave, Jr., and I had another conversation to discuss more dimensions of human behavior that are socially practiced as a way of being. He asked that we recognize physics in the dynamic of practice, even at the quantum level. Explored this time is Construction Theory. 

Dave meets a contemporary who thinks alike about the nature of leading as practice. John Varney founded the Centre for Management Creativity and High Trenhouse and the author of Leadership as Meaning. Enjoy his wisdom and lovely English accent.  

Dave becomes acquainted with Dr. Kim Byas, who, among his several current endeavors, including Vice President of Community Engagement and Impact at The Center for Health Affairs, is a member of the Conscious Leadership Guild. In the course of this conversation, Kim introduces the concept of the origin story. Each of us has one, yet to inform and grow our practices, we can become more aware of this unique personal resource. Journaling is one way of doing so. 

Dave introduces Kyndra Frazier, a doctoral student studying Organization Development and Change at Bowling Green University. She is well into her career as a pastor, social worker, and consultant and aims to become a chief spiritual officer in a progressive company. 

Dave discovered that his versatile friend from 'way back' practices genealogy as an avocation. Barbara MacDonald Saabye, a fellow graduate of the Portland, Maine Deering High School Class of 1961, tells how searching for her grandfather's records captivated her interest in researching other family lineages. Forty years later, she uses Family Search.com to find the ancestry of friends and fellow genealogists. 

Dave reconnects with his former student, Pam Potanka, to learn she is joining her former colleague, John Kelly, to blend their advanced managerial leadership practices to create a custom recruitment and development firm Arise Results Business Services.  

Dave reconnects with Discussion Partner Collaborative Managing Principal Tom Casey to learn what his research tells senior leaders they are facing ahead in our time's raging Practice white waters. Vicarious trauma and Predicate are the two factors they have under discussion for leader development. 

Dave adds to our deep dive for the closest look so far at the socially-enacted  nature of Practice, the ideas of philosopher and cognitive scientist John Vernaecke.; Relevance Realization in particular. 

Dave Jr. and his dad resume their exploration of social action and  Practice by delving into Ralph Stacey's theories on complex responsive processes. Reading Stacey's books caused Dave to make a major revision to his doctoral dissertation, Social Enactoin: How TalkinInteraction Constitutes Social Organization. 

I am at an entirely different point in my life as a recent widower. Talk about change! Accordingly, I am shifting my attention to practitioners who make our daily lives livable, many of whom are paid by the hour. Yet, they shine and see their role and work as a personal practice. I will both podcast conversations with them and create short videos telling their stories. Yes, change is afoot. I'll still post conversations with organization and leadership developers, but I will feature the people whose work I also admire.   

I move past 12 and 13 to reprise this Episode 14 as the last one before I resume new podcasting. Peter gives us the "why" of our and your attention to Practice. It organizes what we think about our Practice, and Practice organizes us! Asked, "Who are you?', we tend to answer with what we do (Practice). Asked, "What do you love doing?" we may respond differently than what we are paid to do. That's Practice rising from our souls.  

Change makes the leader, and leading makes the change. Peter and Dave, co-authors of On Practice as a Way of Being, talk about leading as a dynamic practice available to anyone, at any moment, to make change happen  

Peter and Dave continue their conversation probing the developmental nature of Practice. Episode 10 was recorded in 2019 as they collaborated on what became Peter's last book - On Practice as a Way of Being. People find something we have the energy to do, and we are driven to do it better each time. 

Dave and Peter deepened their thinking about practice, introduced in their digital book On Practice as a Way of Being.  Over time, intended results teach practitioners what works and why. The payoff is increasing performance levels. If you stick with it, it sticks with you.  

Peter and Dave recorded in 2021. Peter predicted that digitizing our work and its context was accelerating. Today, Artificial Intelligence applications abound. Their book On Practice as a Way of Being is one of the first digital-only, interactive books. They went all in on this trend. Here is a preview. 

Dave and Peter examine their conjecture in On Practice as a Way of Being, that there is a dynamic interflow of social and technical conditions. Four years later, AI technologies are mimicking human-social behaviors. Practice seeks the optimum experience of both. 

This episode was initially recorded in late 2019, just as COVID invaded our lives and livelihoods.  Then and now, it is a question of our desire and ability to learn as beginners. Change is changing. Can we keep up? 

Among the 32 Conjectures on why your practice matters in On Practice as a Way of Being is how Practice is perceptual and perspectival. What the person sees in moments of doing is what is acted upon (no matter what observers like Vaill and Fearon think is real). Listen to them form their points of view on points of view back in 2019. 

The essence of Practice cannot be fully described through lists or agreements in this conversation. It is ultimately defined by each individual practitioner and so much more. Peter and Dave exchange ideas freely and formalize these ideas in their book On Practice as a Way of Being.   

While collaborating on the final draft of On Practice as a Way of Being, Peter and Dave recorded conversations similar to those in the book to originate the Practice? Podcast. There are 32 conjectures about the complex, yet personal, nature of Pratice. Myths and assumptions are pondered in this episode. 

Peter Vaill invited Dave to help him complete what was likely to be Peter's last book, On Practice as a Way of Being. In the Summer of 2019, Dave learned how to produce a podcast to capture the idea-rich conversations he was having with Peter.  To us, and you, Practice is personal. 

Chief Compassion Officer Sean Harvey's work with men in the most challenging roles and situations elicits a string of 'wows' from Dave. The author of Warrior Compassion: Unleashing the Healing Power of Men, Sean, offers hope that new systems and structures are emerging that favor our spirits in all endeavors.  

Tom Casey and his firm, Discussion Partners Collaborative, constantly cast questions to various leaders to catch the emerging trends shaping the context for leading their organizations. Dave and Tom discuss the yield from the cast of this question. What do you find reprehensible in a leader? Clue. #1 is hypocrisy. 

Corporate business operations are where multiple practices converge, with daily outcomes predicted and not. Dave's former student, Senior Vice President Greg Balicki, works at the nexus of Voya's converging business problems and opportunities to lead problem-solving projects addressing both. 

People find the need and space to change by experiencing Lisa Lloyd's "bespoke support" designs. Dave enjoys this conversation with a fellow podcaster. Lisa is Beyond the Water Cooler. He agrees with her theme: "It's time for change." 

Dave talks with business growth specialist HR Huntsman and makes the pleasant discovery that The Leaders EDGE is his client company's people - all of them - working in a complex social system that his consulting makes lastingly real.  

Listening to Happiness at Work podcaster and agile leadership consultant Elisa Tuijnder is strangely encouraging. She is not hashing over the past (like Dave does). She is tossing digital breadcrumbs ahead of time for us to follow into the future. 

Dave was intrigued by a business consultant about the founder of My Business on Purpose, Scott Beebe's logo - Liberating Owners from Chaos. These days, who doesn't need a coach who believes we can handle the yet-to-be-known future? Scott's 100+ business clients know the value of a steady guide.  

Dave met an actual AI content creator, Alex Liteplo, a practice for all our futures. Dave is trying out one of Alex's AI-generated clips to feature podcast episodes with his son Dave, Jr. The images correspond to Dave's words as in a dance. Magic!  

Social Enaction thinker Dave Fearon helps his dad Dave Fearon overcome his reluctance to accept AI as an inevitable presence in our practice lives. 

Dave returned (see Episode 257) to Relational Leadership thinker Mark Bradford to be with him in a virtual social space where designing thinking has plenty of room to bloom. And, for Dave, it did. 

Dave and Paul Crick, Founder of Elevate Partnership, exchange insights into the marvelous mysteries of humans' behavior in leading, composing, and performing in concert. While you will not hear classical music in the background, it is the analogy to leading playing in their thoughts. 

Dave noticed that his former student Hannah Cooper, now a business analyst, was still the softball enthusiast he knew nearly ten years ago. Her practice evolved from player to coach to founder/trainer of Cooper Clinics. Hannah's vision is that girls and young women will develop in spirit, mind, and body with a sport they can play well into adulthood. 

Freek Sanders, from the Netherlands, is an action researcher, poet, and certified executive coach, among other things. Dave finds his current focus on the role of silence in leadership discourse interesting. However, this episode is not 30 minutes of silence. Rather, it suggests that we could all benefit from more moments of peaceful quiet.

Dave was attracted to the evocative title of Historian/Business Professor Martin Gutmann's new book - The Unseen Leader. This led to a rousing conversation and the promise to keep on learning with each other. Seeing is believing in the depth of leadership. 

Dave always looks for thinkers who can contribute a different perspective to leading and developing our leadership and collaborative design practices. Dave had to reach all the way out from Connecticut to New Zealand, but he found BeWeDo founder, Aikido-inspired Mark Bradford fits this bill and so much more. 

Son Dave Fearon continues informing me about the hidden 'goings on' as we humans create and use information in conversation, laying out the path for practice.  The typed letters are not information until you read and give them meaning. 

Poet, coach, group process facilitator, and refreshingly kind person, Tenneson Woolf and Dave 'speak' in close harmony (singing is out of the question for Dave). They share ways, each in his way, gauges success as moments when guiding people releases untapped potential to solve and to soar.  

Dave and Kathy Lund Dean were recognized in subsequent years with the Management & Organizational Behavior Teaching Society's David L. Bradford Award for a lifetime of leadership focusing on teaching and learning. Years of creative accomplishments 'become' the person as a way of being. Kathy's unique role as The Board of Trustees Distinguished Chair in Leadership and Ethics is becoming to Gustus Adolfus College. Two unabashed lovers of teaching converse here. 

Cornelius (Niel) Uliano tells Dave he was inspired to become a filmmaker in the eighth grade. And so he has! He left Newington, Connecticut, to attend film school four years later. Today, he is the Co-producer and writer of The Peanuts Movie. And, on to other Peanuts movies for Apple+... Well, listen, and Niel will tell his story. And to think he grew up two miles from Dave's campus and was the brother of Dave's favorite student, John Uliano! 

Easterseals campaigns and inter-organizational collaborations happen out of the goodness of people's hearts. President & CEO of Easterseals Capital Region & Eastern Connecticut, inc. Robin Sharp leads with a deep appreciation for volunteered resources whose disabled beneficiaries have a better quality of life. 

I'll tell you a story about the sincerely practiced storyteller in this episode. David Hutchens taps into our humanity and finds the gold in real and true stories (or delightful fiction). Our stories. Our organisations' stories. Our town's stories. And he/we will live happily ever after. 

Leading is a skillful practice, and the founder of the Leadership Skills Lab, Gary Lloyd, never lets up on the quest for better ways. Dave realizes he has fallen behind his contemporary Gary, who is urging him to put AI (artificial intelligence) to this purpose. Well, the learning never ceases if you are majorly curious. 

We continue our series of 'Dave & Dad" learning conversations, looking closely for what happens in moments, engaging all our senses, and compelling our full consciousness. Our practices grow us forward, always landing us in a new time and place (even if the space seems to be the same as before, yet connected anew). 

Our intentional practices have landed us amid a socio-political context of pessimism, anger, and even rage. Dave, Lizy, and Tom talk over such findings in a recent Discussion Partners Collaborative leadership sentiment survey.  We still focus and do what we can to make things better. 

A Bowling Green State University Doctorate in Organization Development & Change was just conferred upon this seasoned leader whose research focuses on exemplary leaders in highly disruptive settings (COVID). Dr. Kelly Gesmundo Clarke goes now where uncertainty prevails to encourage exemplary leadership practice. "You can find Dr. Gesmundo Clarke here: Exemplary Leadership Institute 

Kathryn Kaplan is now a professional grief counselor. For most of her career, she was an Organization Development consultant. This is the fifth episode with Kathryn, each marking a transformational moment in her practice life. Her latest book, Dying With His Eyes Wide Open, prompts this reunion of two former Peter Vaill students. Dave ventures that we can choose to develop grieving losses as a practice.  

Dave discovers a natural teaching quality in his guest Organizational Development professional, Dr. Lisa Thomas. Mutual development happens in moments when Lisa is coaching, facilitating, or instructing. Her earnest desire for the betterment of others is palpable. You will experience it in this conversation.  

Dave's former student, Kelly Harper, CPA, manages her fortunate way of life as an accountant who constantly leads and learns. After doing so at several global corporations, Kelly brings her team's talents to corporate customers of Deloitte. 

Dave Fearon, Jr. summarizes the progression of his Social Enaction thoughts across the 18 episodes of conversation with his co-inquiring father (me). This brings us to Conversational Analysis revealing the practice that holds us humans together (or apart). Talking.