The Art of Focused Conversation

100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace

R. Brian Stanfield

• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781550925524
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

> Has sold over 3500 copies through the ICA alone in two years > Concisely and clearly explains the method of focused conversation; patented method > The 100 conversation examples are extremely well-organized, with all information -- the situation, aim, hints, and kinds of questions -- on a single page > An excellent resource for improving communication skills in the workplace environment, going deeper into key issues, and encouraging much improved dialogue generally

Part I

Theory and Practice

CHAPTER 1

Why Conversations? and Why the Workplace?

At its essence, every organization is a product of how its members think and interact. Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross and Smith: The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook

Besieged by data overload and seduced by knowledge from books and tapes, many people seem to have forgotten the value of the wisdom gained by ordinary conversations. But there are still those who believe in handling real situations by talking to real people. While information may be imparted in many ways, it seems that real know-how and insight is created in exchange with others.

A conversation with one person can solve a problem, or help heal a wound. A conversation with several people can generate commitment, bond a team, generate new options, or build a vision. Conversations can shift working patterns, build friendships, create focus and energy, cement resolve.

Why, then, is the relationship between people as they talk one of the biggest challenges organizations face? Why do people have a hard time communicating with each other? Why are we so terrible at listening? Why do conversations too often turn into arguments or trivia? Why are we so critical of what our colleagues say? Why are we afraid that the sky will fall in if we don’t hasten to correct someone else’s opinion? How can so many people be arrogant enough to assume they are infallible and omniscient?

The reasons are many—the fragmentation of communication in a TV age; the traditional mental habits we have learned and continue to use, no matter how poorly they work; and emerging trends in the workplace itself. These reasons are picked up in the next section.

The Fragmentation of Conversation

The world is in information glut. Information used to be an essential resource in helping us overcome technological and social problems, but our very technological cleverness has transformed data into garbage. As more and more unprocessed information piles up in our computers and hard-copy files, we become in Neil Postman’s words, garbage collectors. While the information industry works overtime to build better computers and CD-ROMs hold more information by the gigabyte, the world is no more successful at extracting real wisdom from it for living our lives and solving real social, ecological, political, or even economic, problems. Education insists on pumping ever greater numbers of facts into students’ heads with less and less connection between the bits. These patterns are repeated in our conversations with other people. Most of us have an image of conversation as chatting. The art of serious conversation seems to be fading away. In the age of TV, where sound bites are measured in seconds and fractions of seconds, many actual conversations become equally hurried. The exchanges are quick, jerky, and often without any development of ideas. We find ourselves imitating a TV announcer’s style, in which judgements come before questions. Probably most of us agree we are deleting the thought process, yet we feel we have no time for real reflection.

THE IMAGE OF CONVERSATION

The prevailing image of conversation is chit chat as people brush past each other on street corners, around the water cooler, or over coffee breaks. Such discussions are generally strings of semi-connected statements. “Yesterday I went to the movies and saw Gargantua—it was great!” “I’m getting my hair done after work today—I’ve got the best hairdresser in the world.” “Wow, did you see the report Angela turned in—she really busted her gut on it—I don’t know why!” End of conversation. Back to work.

If someone on that coffee break treasured serious conversation, she would ask questions about each of the statements above. To the first, “What was great about the movie? Why did you like it?” To the second, “Why is he the best hairdresser in the world?” To the third, “What was special about Angela’s report ? Why was it so important to her that she ‘busted her gut’?” In other words, there needs to be someone in every conversation, who, in whatever words, says, “Say a bit more about that.”

SOUND-BITE CONVERSATIONS

Life is moving so fast, so much is crammed into each day, that an unspoken rule arises: if you have something to say, make it short. People get into the habit of crimping on what they say. If they have to fill in a survey, their economy with words is positively Scrooge-like: “Wonderful! A1! Helped me a lot.” or “Needs more work.” A school teacher would want to write in red, “PLEASE expand on these ideas!” How can learning happen with such limited communication?

With such restrictions on expression comes a dearth of reflectiveness. Was it Socrates who said, “The unreflected life is good for nothing!” We all find ourselves moving through one activity after another without stopping to ask, “What happened here? Why was that important to me?” or “Why did I get so angry in that meeting?” Nor do we usually ask, “What are the long-term implications of what we just decided?”

Traditional Mental Habits

Another set of patterns restricting conversation stems from how people are taught to think, at least in Western-style education. In one of his writings, “Hints toward an Essay on Conversation”, Jonathan Swift described the timeless abuses of face-to-face talk and the ugly conversational sexism in the society of his day. Many of his observations apply equally well to current conversations. He complained that “so useful and innocent a pleasure as talking with each other…should be so much neglected and abused.” He backs up his point with instances: “an impatience to interrupt each other, and the uneasiness of being interrupted ourselves, flooding listeners with self-indulgent talk, overemphasizing the importance of being witty, using jargon to show off, and the custom of pushing women aside during serious discourse.” (Swift, A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversations). Swift’s observations point to a much deeper block to intelligent conversations.

THE CULTURE OF ADVOCACY

The advocate is one who pleads, recommends, pushes a specific perspective, proposal, or point of view, or a particular product. The advocate is convinced that his position is right and seeks others who will support it. The inquirer, on the other hand, comes at a topic with an open mind looking for a creative or viable option, or the facts of a particular matter. He is trying to open up new ground, or get a new take on “established truth”.

We are not good at balancing advocacy and inquiry. Most of us are educated to be good advocates. While there is nothing wrong with persuasion, positional advocacy often takes the form of confrontation, in which ideas clash rather than inform.

Rick Ross and Charlotte Roberts point out that managers in Western corporations receive a lifetime of training in being forceful, articulate advocates. They know how to present and argue strongly for their views. But as people rise in the organization, they are forced to deal with more complex and interdependent issues where no one individual knows the answer. In this more complicated situation, the only viable option is for groups of informed and committed individuals to think together to arrive at new insights. At this point, they need to learn to skilfully balance advocacy with enquiry. (Ross and Roberts in The Fifth Discipline Field Book, pp. 253-259)

FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER

Our egos are often so hell-bent on getting our own ideas out that we can hardly wait for others to finish talking. What others are saying becomes a terrible interruption in what we are trying to say. In the process, we not only fail to understand what others are saying; we do not even hear them out. De Bono’s description of parallel thinking aptly describes the kind of flow that is possible in a conversation where different ideas are allowed and encouraged:

“Instead of a conversation which is really an argument where opinions clash with each other, and the best man wins, a good conversation employs a kind of parallel thinkin...