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2 How conversations work Conversation is our primary management tool. We converse to build relationships with colleagues and customers. We influence others by holding conversations with them. We converse to solve problems, to co-operate and find new opportunities for action. Conversation is our way of imagining the future. It may be good to talk, but conversations at work are often difficult. A manager summed up the problem to me recently. ‘If we don’t re-learn how to talk with each other,’ he said, ‘frequently and on a meaningful level, this organisation won’t survive.’ What is a conversation? Conversations are verbal dances. The word derives from the Latin, ‘to move around with’. Like any dance, a conversation has rules, and standard moves. These allow people to move more harmoniously together, without stepping on each other’s toes or getting out of step. Different kinds of conversation have different conventions. Some are implicitly understood; others, for ( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.
22 Improve your Communication Skills example in presentations or meetings, must be spelt out in detail and rehearsed. A conversation is a dynamic of talking and listening. Without the listening, there’s no conversation. And the quality of the conversation depends more on the quality of the listening than on the quality of the speaking. Balancing advocacy and enquiry Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline (Random House Business Books, London, 1993), uses the words ‘advocacy’ and ‘enquiry’ to describe talking and listening. Talking is principally the means by which we advocate our point of view, our ideas, our thinking. Listening is the process of enquiring into the other person’s point of view, their ideas, their thinking. Adversarial conversations are pure advocacy. We advocate our own point of view, reasonably and calmly, and become more and more entrenched in our positions. Advocacy without enquiry simply escalates into conflict. You can see this escalation happening every day. It’s exhausting and debilitating. It becomes part of the culture within which managers operate. It can be so upsetting that managers avoid holding conversations at all and retreat behind their office doors – if they are lucky enough to have one. But conversations that are pure enquiry are also unsatisfactory. If we concentrate solely on listening to the other person, we risk an unclear outcome – or no outcome at all. Indeed, some managers use the skills of enquiry – listening, asking questions, and always looking for the other point of view – as a way of avoiding difficult decisions. The best conversations balance advocacy and enquiry. They are a rich mix of talking and listening, of stating views and asking questions. ( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.
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198 Appendix Steven Mithen’s book
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200 Appendix Chapter 9: Networking:
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