speech acts

The One Capacity You’ve Ignored Far Too Long—Part 1

If you had to identify one human capacity that makes each of the following possible, what would it be?

  • Engineering a city
  • Executing a business strategy
  • Producing offspring
  • Running a marathon
  • Playing in a jazz quartet

The answer may not be obvious. These activities seem to have little in common.

Before revealing what connects them, consider a second list. What might underlie these familiar organizational problems?

  • Lack of trust
  • Miscommunication
  • Lack of clarity
  • Lack of accountability

At first glance, the two lists appear to ask DOWNLOAD PDF

By |2026-08-31T19:18:06-04:00August 31st, 2026|Blog, Communication, Leadership|0 Comments

Generative Communication: A Model for Generating Commitment, part 2

Developing a generative mindset involves a shift in being. We expand our awareness and open up possibilities for creating new contexts. We transform our relationship to language from being describers of some objective-knowable world to being designers of reality. Beyond new content and style, we realize the power of perception to alter contexts.

In my last blog post, I examined this mindset, the source of generativity with a set of principles, and the language of action.

This blog begins with language – specifically, speech acts. I then offer a model for generative communication to cultivate generative conversations.

The DOWNLOAD PDF

By |2024-08-14T15:44:41-04:00May 9th, 2022|Blog, Communication|0 Comments

Generative Communication: The Power to Connect and Create, part 1

Language is the house of being. This phrase by philosopher Martin Heidegger reveals a dimension of being human that connects, coordinates, and creates.

Mastering language involves more than words and terms. Language is our primary system.

  • With awareness, we weave thought and meaning to bridge the mind and existence.
  • With practice, we discern our reactivity and develop the capacity for reflectivity.
  • With language, we wield the power of interpretation to generate meaning-making.

This manifests the possibility of generative communication.

This blog post examines layers of generative communication: the paradigm or mindset, the source of generativity, a set DOWNLOAD PDF

By |2024-08-14T15:44:33-04:00April 18th, 2022|Blog, Communication, Portfolio|0 Comments
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