As extraordinary as it may sound, in this course you will find yourself actually being in a new world. You will accomplish this by being introduced to and then fully engaging in a new conversational domain.
Conversational domain is a term of art in that, even though the individual words are familiar, the term as it is used by the authors Erhard et al (2022) has a special meaning as follows below in part:
“Conversational domains are crafted conversations about a specific area of interest, which conversations provide unique ways of seeing things, and provide new possibilities and openings for action in that area of interest that allow for competence and ultimately expertise.
If you had the time to look for yourself, you would see that the various worlds in which human beings are engaged that require at least competence are constituted as conversational domains. For example, the world of medicine, and the world of plumbing, and the world of physics are each constituted as a specific conversational domain.
If you have a world in which you have achieved some degree of competence, you will see that to some significant degree you have mastered the conversational domain that constitutes that world.
More specifically, conversational domains are made up of specialized terms (terms with a special, precise, and sometimes technical meaning), and carefully crafted statements (that is, sentences, paragraphs, and even discrete sections of discourse) that use those terms in a way that opens up unique ways of seeing things and new openings for effective action in a specific area of interest.
In short, a conversational domain is made up of specialized terms and carefully crafted statements to open up a new world for us. As Kuhn says in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, “… though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world.” “
As a result of your participation in this introductory material and participation in the full course you will be working in a different world.
References
Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve and Zaffron, Steve and Echeverria, Jeronima, Course Materials for: ‘Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model’ (October 4, 2022). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 09-038, Simon School Working Paper No. 08-03, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 08-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1263835