Masterstrokes: Re-inventing Leadership in Uncertain Times 9789353887063, 9353887062

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Act on How Successful Teams Align Conversations with Action

Latha Vijaybaskar

SAGE was founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune to support the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing innovative and high-quality research and teaching content. Today, we publish over 900 journals, including those of more than 400 learned societies, more than 800 new books per year, and a growing range of library products including archives, data, case studies, reports, and video. SAGE remains majority-owned by our founder, and after Sara’s lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures our continued independence. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

ADVANCE PRAISE

If you’re tired of your meetings and conversations ending with no more progress than when you started, then you need  Talk Action!  Latha’s research and insights will help you rewire your conversations to end in actionable items and create meaningful connections with each interaction. A must-read! —Dr Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers50 #1 Executive Coach and New York Times Bestselling Author of Triggers, Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

We create our worlds through our conversations. After a long time, I had heard about a book that made me smile. Latha’s book shows how to frame conversations, so people engage and act. You will never look at your team interactions quite the same way. —Dr Ritu Anand, Chief Leadership and Diversity Officer, Tata Consultancy Services

This book uniquely positions the talk–action spectrum to highlight the enigmatic power of conversations in a team context. As a person interested in team dynamics research, this book has given me insights on how well intended, positive and authentic conversations could drive team engagement, team trust and team performance. The research-based VITAL framework is sequentially well constructed and is easy to understand and implement. Interestingly, the book also extends the lens to the virtual team context which is today’s reality. As organizations are increasingly relying on teams to solve their complex issues, this book comes in

handy. The self-help tips and tools will make practitioners grab the book to take steps and make their teams engaged and effective.

—Dr Upam Pushpak Makheja, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli

We often get stuck in our interactions, unable to move from problem to potential, from idea to implementation. This is where tools such as the ‘talk kaleidoscope’ and ‘career dashboard’ from Latha’s book help managers and leaders to navigate conversations and inspire action. —S. Sowmiyanarayanan, Senior Head, Credit Operations, Bajaj Finance

I am a strong believer of the fact that conversations play a very significant role in a team.  The VITAL framework given in the book is a great way to navigate a conversation to action. As an executive coach and author, I highly recommend you to grab a copy of this compelling book with its compendium of tools, story studies and methods to apply the framework in the important team conversations. 

—Manbir Kaur, Executive and Leadership Coach, Author of Get Your Next Promotion and Are You the Leader You Want to Be?

‘Conversations create transformation’ is the deep message that Latha is giving us in this book with relatable stories and structures. —Rajat Garg, Co-founder, Coach-to-Transformation

The book has been closely researched and penned, and it outlines the basis of engagement often confronting people managers in companies—the ‘tough conversation’ and the role of communication in team dynamics. The VITAL conversation framework gives a good workable mechanism to make good teams work towards becoming great teams. The positive organizational environment, a critical driver for business results in the current volatile business

environment, is enumerated through case studies and analysis. This is a recommended read for the current and future people managers and business leaders.

—Balasubramaniam Muthuswamy, Recruitment Business Owner, Managing Director, XecTalent Advisors Private Limited

Latha uses her depth of academic knowledge, coaching experience, facilitation, case studies, industry research and, most importantly, an empathetical disposition to offer a way out for a challenge that the industry has grappled with consistently over time—why great teams perform. For example, it is fascinating to see how she weaves Simon Sinek, William Isaacs, Harvard Business Review and J. L. Austin into her narrative to prove one of her points. For those of you who prefer the practical route, her framework provides the means to effectively bridge talk and action! —Sudhir Rao, Growth Catalyst and Leadership Whisperer

The work of leadership is done through powerful conversations— dialogues that illuminate, engage, provoke and empower people. In Talk Action, Dr Latha Vijaybaskar draws on years of research to provide insights and tools that enable conversations that align to engagement and action by creating a safe space and allowing for all voices to be heard. This leads to purposeful and productive teams and organizations. —Nirupama Subramanian, Co-founder and Managing Partner, GLOW; Founder and CEO, Powerfulife

Act on

Act on How Successful Teams Align Conversations with Action

Latha Vijaybaskar

Copyright © Latha Vijaybaskar, 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2022 by

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 18 Cross Street #10-10/11/12 China Square Central Singapore 048423 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd. Typeset in 11/14pt Adobe Caslon Pro by Fidus Design Pvt Ltd, Chandigarh. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022936979

ISBN: 978-93-5479-506-0 (PB) SAGE Team: Manisha Mathews, Neena Ganjoo and Rajinder Kaur Illustration credit: Shriram Vijaybaskar

With the blessing of Ganesha, whose tusk is said to have penned these lines of Krishna as told by Vyasa: anudvega-karam´vākyam´ satyam´ priya-hitam´ cayat svādhyāyābhyasanam´ caivavāń-mayam´ tapa ucyate —Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 17, Stanza 15 Literal meaning: ‘Austerity of speech consists of speaking in a manner that will not agitate the minds of the listeners or enkindle the base emotions of the listener or his passion; the communication should be true. It must be beneficial to the listener and also pleasant. One should also engage in self-study.’

Thank you for choosing a SAGE product! If you have any comment, observation or feedback, I would like to personally hear from you. Please write to me at [email protected] Vivek Mehra, Managing Director and CEO, SAGE India.

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SAGE India offers special discounts for purchase of books in bulk. We also make available special imprints and excerpts from our books on demand. For orders and enquiries, write to us at Marketing Department SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1, Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, Post Bag 7 New Delhi 110044, India E-mail us at [email protected]

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This book is also available as an e-book.

To Priyanka and Shriram. Always.

CONTENTS

Foreword  by N. Jayasankaranxi Acknowledgementsxiii   1. Introduction

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PART   1. HOW TALK BECOMES ACTION  2. What Makes Great Teams Great?

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 3. The Role of Conversation

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 4. The Talk Kaleidoscope

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 5. Navigate from Talk to Action

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PART   2. VITAL: THE TALK–ACTION FRAMEWORK  6. Visualize

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 7. Invite Context

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 8. Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis

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 9. Action Design

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10. Learning in Reflection

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PART   3. TALK IN ACTION: FOUR CONVERSATIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL TEAMS 11. The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success

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12. Connected Conversations

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13. Influence Conversations

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14. Career Conversations

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15. Difficult Conversations

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16.  E-Talk: Adapting the Four Conversations in Virtual Teams

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About the Author

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Talk Action

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FOREWORD

We often hear references to ‘talkers versus doers’ where the term talker is used in a relatively disparaging sense. Latha is able to create a refreshing change around ‘talking’ by introducing in it an action component.

Talk Action uniquely focuses on the role of conversation as the underlying rhythm to which a team moves. Right from her quote on austerity of speech as given in the Bhagavad Gita to including the talk action principles to the current remote teams, her writing portrays her as a citizen of the world with a free-flowing spirit that is captivating.

There is a mechanical monotony in modern day corporate life with its accent on targets, reviews, feedback, remedial action and crisis management. These are compounded by constant changes in leadership arising from attrition and post-2020, the work-from-home working. Heart-to-heart conversations are, therefore, increasingly becoming a rarity and in this context, Latha categorizes positive conversation in teams as connected talk, influential talk, career talk and difficult talk—an aid to potential and practising leaders to hone their team-building skills. Positive conversations can indeed lift morale, promote engagement and earn allegiance and respect that the process-oriented systems of modern management fail to do.

Latha’s proficiency in organizational behaviour and as an exemplary coach comes out distinctly in her exposition of the interactions she has had with coaches/mentees and leaders leading to her eureka moments and the story studies that form the bedrock of the book. The design of each chapter comprising a story for ‘learning from’, reflective questions and the sketchnote summaries is proof of the

emphasis on storytelling as a medium of teaching/training and learning. Consequently, her book can be used by managers, leaders, academicians and trainers in the course of their day-to-day work. Talk Action makes compelling reading that is different from the plethora of books on human resource management and teams. My mission is simple: I want to help eager learners, academicians, colleges and universities to achieve lasting changes in learning for themselves, their teams and communities. And I have been able to achieve them one conversation at a time! I have known Latha first as a student 20 years ago since her first day as an eager MBA student and am proud to see her grow and serve a wide audience with her research and coaching.

—N. Jayasankaran,  Former Vice-chancellor, Kanchi University and Former Director General, BIM, Tiruchirappalli 

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No serious book is simply written. It is born out of your soul. This book is no exception. However, nurturing my ideas to the actual theory, research and writing was not a solo journey. I have been blessed to have the assistance of many people over the years and would not have been able to succeed without them.

My first and biggest acknowledgement is to the growing community of people around the world who show the commitment to hold real conversations and live the ideas represented in this book. I am grateful to my clients, students and participants in my workshops for bringing this book to life. If not for you, these conversations would have been wrapped up at the end of a coaching session. My heartfelt gratitude to my Professor Dr N. Jayasankaran who years ago paved the way for my interest and passion in management and today has penned the foreword for this book.

The path from idea to manuscript was difficult, but the journey from a draft to a published copy is a writer’s nightmare. Special thanks to Manisha Matthews of SAGE and her team, who have lovingly crafted every sentence of this book with me. Thank you, team; you made this journey a lot less arduous than it would have been, and thanks for putting up with me patiently when I missed yet another deadline. I would like to especially mention Shriram Vijaybaskar for the wonderful illustrations throughout this book. Special thanks to all my initial readers who have read and endorsed my efforts.

I am deeply grateful to my husband, Vijay, for the vital conversations these last two decades, honest critique and abundant support. You have truly been my chrysalis.

Conversations with my kids, Priyanka and Shriram, take my breath away. They have and will always remain my muse. And now, thank you, reader!

By reading this book and every time you brave yourself to hold deep conversations to lead, connect and influence, you make my vision come true. I raise my glass to you!

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Human nature is the problem, but human nature is also the solution.

Steven Pinker

Eureka!

A decade ago, the walls of my house used to echo this chant frequently. I remember narrating the story of Archimedes1 and how he ran through the streets of Syracuse shouting ‘Eureka!’ on discovering the principles of buoyancy, to my then nine-year-old, and every time there was even a glimmer of a new idea, the chant and march of Eureka would begin. From making soap bubbles to playing pretend, the Eureka shriek became common. The chant reached new exhilarated levels in energy and decibels (unbearable for parents) when we made a DIY kaleidoscope for a school project. Every frenzied turn of the kaleidoscope earned a loud Eureka, as the light patterns changed inside to give a new picture.

In a way, our lives are also filled with these shifting moments, very much like in a kaleidoscope, and some of them make us shout out ‘Eureka!’ Once we get a glimpse of these new patterns, it becomes difficult to go back to an old pattern to live. In life, our conversations

are those glass pieces, the different lenses which make the kaleidoscope of our lives. Just as fragile, with the ability to reflect and with every turn, some conversations alter our views so much that they transform our life. ‘The talk kaleidoscope’ mentioned in this book is a visual tool to understand and explore the various conversation lenses we come across in life and owes its beginning in this thought.

In my journey exploring the conversation side of life and business, I have had three such kaleidoscopic view of conversations—three Eureka moments which built the foundations of my research, coaching and training.

EUREKA CONVERSATION #1 The first ‘meeting’ of my career as a fresh graduate was to discuss better implementation of the annual performance appraisal and how training interventions would then be mapped to those requirements. My role that day was to listen and learn (I was a four-day-old management trainee).

As the team filled into the conference room, nine members, all my seniors and very experienced, I looked forward to the lesson. And learn I did. For the next hour, every issue was dissected, every angle probed. The camaraderie among the team was visible in their words and emotion. I remember sitting quiet and rather alert, grasping everything which was happening in front of me, like the proverbial sponge. As the meeting ended, the HR head and my mentor called me to his cabin. Expecting to share my learning, I went in thrilled. He asked me in surprise, ‘Where are your notes?’ And I did not have any.

Till that time, I would rarely note things down as I am blessed with a near perfect memory. I rarely forget. In fact, all my life I have been called the USB in school, college and family, and that 2

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fed to my need to remember without support from something trivial like notes.

That day, I replied by quickly summarizing the points in the meeting. My mentor smiled and said, ‘Unless you plan to tattoo “I always remember,” how will others in the meeting know that you are committed to the team?’ His question made me think. He continued, ‘Your conversation, ideas and engagement are the only way the team knows your commitment. Now, how will you tell or show your team that you listened well, were interested, are passionate and want to contribute?’ That day was my first Eureka conversation. My lesson was: ‘Commit to all aspects of conversation, even listening.’ My pen has been a symbol of my commitment since that day. Think about the following situations in your life • How often have we been doubtful to others’ interest levels and commitment? • How often did we wonder what that poker face meant? • Why did my boss not acknowledge my idea? • Why did I not get a reply?

Slowly, with one conversation at a time, we manage to systematically break the fragile trust and compassion in our teams and suddenly one day it starts to reflect in our decisions, collaborative efforts, performance and loyalty. Commitment to all aspects of our conversation, especially our listening, builds the rhythm of a successful team.

A. R. Rahman puts this beautifully in the opening narration of his short film Thaalam: The Rhythm of the Nation2: ‘Imagine India on a boat. The boat is only as strong as the people in it’. Introduction

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As these powerful words of the music maestro slowly sink in, the film transports us to the magic of the snake boat races in Kerala. Vallam Kali is the Malayalam name of the snake boat race. Traditionally, these races are conducted around the festive season of Onam. They are long, snake-like boats rowed by around a hundred men. Even during the races, these boatmen are not professional athletes. They hold everyday jobs and yet they row in perfect synchronized harmony.

What keeps them in this state of synchronized action? One of the coaches of the race explains that the harmony happens when they follow the rhythm. Actually, every boat has a team of around 85–90 oarsmen, called the Tuzhakars. Then there are the Valiyaveedu men, a team of five who steer the boat. But the rhythm is maintained by the team of 10 musicians who play the drum, sing the Vanchipattu (boat-song in Malayalam) and cheer. During the races, the oarsmen listen to the drum and synchronize their rowing. As the short film moves, we hear a beautiful song, ‘To the rhythms flowing underneath, to the call for celebration, our lands arise.’ In our teams, lives, family and society, our conversations create this flowing rhythm underneath; we need to stay committed to them.

EUREKA CONVERSATION #2 Some of my most unforgettable experiences have been in my workshops, classrooms and coaching conversations. This Eureka conversation was a goosebump-inducing experience in one of my workshops on ‘Difficult Conversations’. While trying to understand what makes a conversation difficult, the participants also needed to keep in mind the power of a transformative conversation. Therefore, one of the quicker activities to stimulate their thinking was to reflect on the ‘one conversation which sparked their thinking and challenged, inspired or shaped their future’. My Eureka moment was in their responses. There were some really powerful conversations, and I have used this activity in many places after that. 4

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Some of the responses were as follows:

1. In the meeting for a role change internally, my manager spoke with me for a long time about my passion, my reason to want this role and what I felt about the current projects. I felt so happy during that conversation, but the biggest inspiration was when he mentioned that I did not have some required skills for the job but he was confident that I’d learn them and figure out the process. His confidence in me made me work doubly hard to succeed. 2. I am never sure why talking to my wife is the most motivating and inspiring conversation every time. I speak about my challenges, dreams, difficult days and failures and mistakes. It is not like she understands the nature of my work, nor does she offer solutions. She listens. She is with me in my emotion, and after some time the solutions come in on their own. I feel it is that connection in her listening that sparks my thinking. 3. Sometime ago, our coffee machine was moved to the floor below. Many of us did not like it. This began a chain reaction of complaints: the room was too hot or too cold, the cubicle system was not working and the Internet connection was poor. Then one day, our boss made us realize the amount of time we critique the trivial issues and actually do not take steps to change. The best part was that he never once brought up even one critique and spoke to us about how we manage to solve some of the biggest problems in our markets and the contribution we make to the country by being part of the organization. I, for one, have never played the trivial critic from that day, and my results have improved. I think that many of us were not even aware of our behaviour till that meeting. The common thread in these conversations which sparked, challenged and changed their future was the authenticity and resonance with the person. In all the conversations above, the participants felt the transformation because the conversation was about ‘them’. Introduction

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Therefore, my second Eureka conversation lesson was: ‘Engagement before action, always.’ In our conversations, we consider engagement and action as two different outcomes and many times do not even link these to conversations. In Chapter 3, we will learn in detail how conversations build trust, which leads to engagement and then actions follow. It is a continuum—the talk–action spectrum.

EUREKA CONVERSATION #3 This Eureka conversation happened a few months ago during one of my coaching sessions. While exploring possibilities in engagement and team performance, my coachee who manages a midsized team said, ‘You know Latha, all these problems will be solved if only I could speak what’s really on my mind.’

We explored the reason why such a conversation did not happen, and he related two incidents. ‘Just last week, we had this incident. I was at the supermarket buying some groceries; the place had very clear instructions and I followed all precautions for social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the man behind me blatantly disregarded every one of the rules. No mask, no social distance and he was actually too close for my comfort. I asked him to move back, and he got angry. Every other person in that store that day was silent. They tolerated him. What should we do when we set these boundaries as a society, as a team and as a family, and still people cross them? For me, this is like a promise broken.

What is even more appalling is the silent reaction of the audience. A few silently nodded their agreement, and that was the most positive response. A few felt that I was being too harsh. What angered me more is that morally I followed the rules and yet when the conversation happened, I said, “Er, sorry, but could you please 6

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maintain the said distance?” And the man who crossed those boundaries, instead of feeling sorry, felt angry.

As a society, as teams, we tolerate people who cross the boundaries, who don’t meet the deadlines and who don’t adhere to the quality requirements or processes. But we keep quiet. I want to learn how I can have those missing conversations without having them build up the disappointment and regret in my mind, which fester and grow like cancer.’ As you read this, does your mind click back to those conversations that you wish you had? If yes, then this is your Eureka conversation too. The missing conversations are like infected wounds, festering and gnawing at us. If we actually spoke and the talk ended in an argument or a fight, we might feel the anger in it and possibly understand the other person’s point of view as well. But by not speaking up, especially when there are broken promises, missed deadlines and lack of information and we tolerate silently, it leads to ‘tolerate tumour’. My third Eureka conversation lesson was:

‘The missing conversations cripple engagement and performance in teams.’ Do you suffer from tolerate tumour? For instance, how do you handle the following? • Your boss has ‘very subtly’ demanded for a deadline which you cannot meet with your current workload.

• You hear rumours about a friend who in reality is going through a rough phase in life, and the added rumours are crippling emotionally. • Your daughter is forever on social media and all the timeouts pleading, bribing work only for a short span of time.

These missing conversations are the confrontations that we do not have. We need to learn how to have these confrontations without playing gymnastics with our emotions. Introduction

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There is yet another form of conversations which seem to be missing in our teams, groups and organizations. These are the agendaless talks which are just meant to connect. I remember that a client once remarked, ‘It seems like we do not know how to talk to a fellow human anymore unless there was a problem, a topic or and an agenda. What happened to good old “Hey, dude, how are you? Let’s catch up!” kind of conversations?’ What does an agendaless conversation mean? It does not mean aimless, meaningless chatter. An agendaless conversation is one where the participants speak to the person, understand them and form deeper connections. They just don’t require an external problem, topic or agenda to hold this space of conversation.

In case it is unclear, here are the lists of topics from the case of the missing conversations.

CONVERSATIONS MEANT TO CONFRONT • Feedback on performance which is not satisfactory • Managing your boss’s expectation

• Keeping your ground when others breach a boundary

• Conversations on missed deadlines and broken promises • Conversations on taboo topics • Saying ‘No’

• Dealing with emotional outburst and anger

• Dealing with past hurt and the resulting silence

CONVERSATIONS MEANT TO CONNECT • Showing empathy to the person

• Respecting the person and their emotions

• Listening to the true messages in the simple, ‘I’m good’ 8

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• Truly meaning to know the answer when we ask, ‘How are you?’ • Not pushing a personal agenda or opinion • Having an open mind

• Being genuinely interested in the person

MUSE ON THE SHOULDER OF GIANTS These three epiphanous moments have been the bedrock of my years of research and continuing work as a coach and facilitator. I started to pay much more attention to the conversations I was having. Seeing them as openings which allowed me to glimpse a larger reality made me more aware of my everyday interactions. Every conversation touch point with peers, students, clients and participants has added to my muse, belief, research and the genesis of the conversation framework called VITAL. This book, therefore, is the collective query of many, the collective learnings in my teams, classrooms and groups, and I write this book standing on the shoulders of many giants.

My work squats right at the intersection of two important thoughts and perspectives: 1. All actions or inactions are dependent on the conversations which occurred earlier, that is, talk leads to action.

2. All conversations have the same three elements, and it is the dynamics between them that creates the difference—the talk kaleidoscope. Both the thoughts are independently superhighways travelled by great thought leaders. Their earlier work has paved way for my research. Positive psychology has been my first brush with the giants. Works of Martin Seligman and Robert Biswas-Diener laid the foundation of my thinking and my research. Further, the works of Jon Gordon in positive leadership and positive teams steered my thinking towards teams. The conversation part has been Introduction

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heavily influenced by theories in generative dialogue, appreciative inquiry and appreciative coaching. Juanita Brown’s world café model has been a major part of my action research; the works of William Isaacs and Peter Senge, David Cooperrider’s model and works following them by Jackie Stavros and Cherie Torres stand by me in my research. While the works of these thought leaders have supercharged my journey, my particular quest has been a bit more niche. ‘My quest has been to figure out how the emerging teams today and in future can become great by treating conversation as their framework to optimize engagement and performance.’

OLD TEAMS BUT NEW SUCCESS FACTORS Humans are a collaborative bunch. Right from our hunting– gathering days to the major shift to farming and civilization, the rise of nations and industry, humans have evolved by working in teams. In fact, anthropologists argue that our speech and intricate languages and expression have evolved because of our need to collaborate better.

The necessity of teams has grown over time from the farming age to the Industrial Age and then Information Age to now the Age of Innovation. Organizations work in teams, as this is a more effective way to get work done. So if teams and their conversations have always been part of human civilization, what is new now?

As we approach the third decade of the 21st century, there is compelling evidence that the nature of our teams in organizations is changing. As businesses become global and complex, their work requires specialization. The very premise of specialization means that one man cannot do all, and therefore teamwork is a necessity. However, it is increasingly clear that the working inside a team has changed much over the last few decades. The most important 10

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changes facing emerging teams today and in future will be as follows: 1. Generational change: The majority of the workforce will be filled with midnight’s grandchildren, that is how Mark Hannant calls the Indian millennials.3 And the Gen Z has entered the workforce. These are the digital natives who are used to having information for free on the Google tap. Their ways of working are completely de-stratified, well connected and specialized. Working with groups of people who are not keen to lead is a challenge not just to leadership but to the team dynamics as well. 2. Technological change: With instant communication technology and shared work platforms, it becomes increasingly important to have clear strategies for two-way conversations using technology. The future drive towards work from anywhere and hybrid work models will challenge our ability to build that connection and collaborate across time and geography. The current pandemic has accelerated this side of team collaboration, and in the future, there may not be a possibility of only ‘work from office’ for many organizations. 3. The concept of time: Time as a concept has changed in many different ways. It is not just shorter project cycles or that the long term now means two years. Changing patterns in leadership is a big change. The last few years have shown that CEOs also do not have long tenure. The concept of working for the same organization till retirement or even a decade is not a priority today. This means that teams work with constantly changing bosses, leaders and team members and still have to perform towards shorter delivery cycles. 4. Leader–follower continuum: The leader–follower relationship has changed from the follower being passive to one where they have a co-dependent role in the success of the team Introduction

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performance. Today, the success depends on proactive, adaptive and positive members who appreciate the role and strengths of their individual self and also that of the team to create a strong web—the team.

HOW DO THESE CHANGES AFFECT THE EVERYDAY WORKING IN A TEAM? Imagine being part of a team of around 12 members. Ria is your boss. You have to closely work with Mani, a team member who will retire in a couple of years and believes strongly in hierarchy, process and everything on paper. In two months, Ria quits and your new boss is Atif. He wants to bring some really great changes, but the team had just now done the bring-the-good-change last year when Ria came onboard. To top them all, the company now has hybrid work culture and team members can choose to work from home or office. None of these factors are actually part of any individual key result area (KRA), and yet these are the factors which will affect everyone’s performance. This is the team of today and of future—hunched down on their monitors from across the world, trying to solve issues which impact huge markets, sometimes isolated in their cubicles and sometimes cheering together in a conference room. The rhythm of their conversations steers the success of their teams.

WHY TALK ACTION? It was 8 August 1942. While the world reeled under the Second World War, India was burning under the colonial apathy of the British. Almost 80 years after the first call to the country’s independence, the Sepoy Mutiny, the struggle for freedom, had become a strong force.

On 8 August 1942, Mahatma Gandhi called for a determined, passive resistance at the Gowalia Tank Maidan, now called the 12

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August Kranti Maidan, in Mumbai. Yes, the Quit India speech4—a speech which sealed the fate of the British rule.

It was a talk which was rooted with deep faith in truth and nonviolence. Gandhiji spoke, ‘Ours is not a drive for power, but purely a nonviolent fight for India’s independence.’ It was a talk which became so powerful that in spite of the mass arrest of Gandhiji and most Congress leaders, the Indian countrymen led Gandhiji’s mantra of the Quit India speech to India’s independence. Here is a mantra, a short one, that I give to you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is ‘Do or Die.’ We shall either free India or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery. Every true Congressman or woman will join the struggle with inflexible determination not to remain alive to see the country in bondage and slavery.

The Quit India Speech was a talk which united Indians and brought us to the gates of independence. A little over a hundred years prior to Mahatma Gandhi’s speech, another speech—a very short one, only 3 minutes, 10 sentences and 272 words long—shook the audience and brought the American Civil War to an end. The Gettysburg Address5 by Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most important 272 words to have been spoken in history. The Battle of Gettysburg left over 8,000 men dead. Lincoln’s speech memorialized the lives lost and struggles faced, transformed the meaning of the Civil War and instigated the cry for a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Both Gandhiji and Lincoln expected ‘action’ because of their speech. They believed their talk to be the first step to action and not a separate activity or prelude to human performance. The empowering standpoint of ‘talk action’ is that ‘If people around us are not delivering results, we are probably not having Introduction

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the required conversations with them.’ The focus in this book is always on us—on what conversation we can have next, so that others can generate results that matter.

SNEAK PEEK INTO WHAT IS INSIDE The journey of this book takes us first into the best possible outcome: what makes good teams great? It is by understanding the qualities that make a great team that we understand the possible gaps and the role of conversation in building and filling these gaps. Chapter 2 brings to light what we know about teams today and what makes them successful. Some of the questions that we will explore are as follows: • What does a successful team look like?

• What are the nuances and behaviours which create these success factors? • What do we mean by high-performing teams? • What do we mean by an engaged team?

In Chapter 3, we shift the focus to conversation and understand the role conversations play in building great teams. The chapter then moves to analyse the gaps. The three most difficult questions we answer here are as follows: • What stops teams from such cohesive engagement and energized action?

• What are the four talk action misalignments which are the biggest obstacles to peak performance? • What are the myths about conversations and the problems teams face without good talk? • How do conversations lay the foundation to all aspects of engagement and performance and therefore the three talk action principles? 14

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Chapter 4 delves a bit deeper into the kinds of conversations we navigate as individuals. An understanding of the nine conversations and our comfort levels in each of the nine conversations gives a clear idea of where our strengths, biases, shadows and silence lie. This chapter explores the conversations we have and our comfort in these conversations through the tool: the talk kaleidoscope. Chapter 5 brings out the solution—the power of a positive conversation and the three principal changes it brings: • What should be the intention of a positive conversation? • How should the dialogues be in a positive conversation? • What should the action signify in a positive conversation? Chapters 6 through 10 delve more deeply into each of the principles, investigating how teams can optimize engagement and performance by treating conversation as their framework of connection and influence. Specifically, these chapters deconstruct the VITAL model and how to use them. Each of the step in the five-step model is a chapter. • Chapter 6: Visualize

• Chapter 7: Invite Context • Chapter 8: Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis • Chapter 9: Action Design • Chapter 10: Learning in Reflection Part 3 of the book attempts to look at the model in action. Four talks which are critical to the success of a team and organization are discussed in detail in Chapter 11. Chapter 12 is about ‘connected talk’—connecting individuals and teams in frictionless talk, be it setting goals, formulating strategies, identifying opportunities, ideating, solving problems or simply building engagement. Conversations which truly engage are connected conversations. Introduction

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Chapter 13 is about ‘influential talk’. Conversations which build on engagement and connection to identify outcomes for others so that they are inspired to change are influential conversations. Whether we talk to team or client, a problem or idea, influential talk are critical to every team. Chapter 14 is about ‘career talk’. Conversations which work towards aligning individual aspirations to organization goals and opportunities are career conversations. A career talk is not limited to performance feedback. Chapter 15 is about ‘difficult talk’. Conversations around differences in attitudinal, behavioural or performance issues which are important in both value and emotion are difficult talks. We see how to navigate these conversations to turn them to engaging opportunities. Chapter 16 talks on how we can adapt our conversations and the VITAL framework to virtual conversations. Each of these conversations need to be mastered for generating results in teams. I try to use the VITAL framework in these situations to talk action! Each chapter contains these three sections. 1. The story study: In each chapter, I have tried to bring my thinking to life by including a story, incident or situation, so we can learn from others. It is comforting to know how others handled their challenges and came out the other side. The real value of these story studies is when readers reflect on them in their context. 2. Reflective questions: Throughout the book, questions that pause you for reflection are provided. It might be better to carry a notebook to journal these reflections. 3. The sketchnote summary: All the principles and models are summarized in a sketchnote for visual storytelling. 16

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A QUICK NOTE While the book itself is pretty conversational in its tone, the lessons inside might need some thinking and stewing in your minds. Therefore, for the best experience, take some time to quickly answer these questions before you continue: 1. What according to you makes a great team?

2. What in your mind is your biggest strength in any conversation?

3. What are the top three problems you face in your conversations? In your teams? In both?

Now as you read the pages of this book, reflect back on your thoughts and your answers. The pages that follow provide a critical piece of an important puzzle. They show a way to dramatically improve not just how we talk but also how we collaborate, influence, perform and lead. Following are a few terms used in the book.

1. Conversation, talk and dialogue: While many books and authors have clearly defined the three terms and have distinguished between the three, a common man tends to use them interchangeably. This book is for all those people who use the medium of interaction to create meaning in their lives, and in this book the three terms, ‘conversations’, ‘talk’ and ‘dialogue’, are used interchangeably. The meaning of a talk in this book is the process of transforming thinking and inducing action through collective learning and inquiry.

2. Initiator: The term ‘initiator’ is referred to the person who starts the conversation. 3. Participant: The term ‘participant’ refers to the person who shares the conversation with the initiator. This can be a person or a group. If the group is large, they are called audience.

Introduction

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NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_(word)#:~:text=The%20 exclamation%20%22Eureka!%22%20is,the%20ancient%20 Greek%20scholar%20Archimedes.&text=Eureka!%22%20after%20 he%20had%20stepped,his%20body%20he%20had%20submerged 2. A. R. Rahman, Thaalam: Rhythm of the Nation, 2019, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=kLoHi4oeyvA 3. Mark Hannant, Midnight’s Grandchildren: How Young Indians Are Disrupting the World’s Largest Democracy (Routledge, 2018). 4. Lorraine Boissoneault, ‘The Speech That Brought India to the Brink of Independence’, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ speech-brought-india-brink-independence-180964366/ 5. Abraham Lincoln Online, ‘The Gettysburg Address’, 1863, http:// www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

Introduction

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PART 1 HOW TALK BECOMES ACTION

CHAPTER 2 WHAT MAKES GREAT TEAMS GREAT?

Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.

Patrick Lencioni

Two decades into the 21st century, at the heart of the networking and innovation age, and we are still figuring out how to build a highly engaged and productive team.

We have all been a part of a team at different times in our lives. But what do we know about teams? Particularly what do we know about the inside working of a team? What makes some teams great and others mediocre? What makes some teams rise to the challenges of the business ecosystem, navigate the obstacles and create disruptive solutions while other teams perish in the rigmarole of daily grind, conflicts, disengagement and attrition?

Take a moment to think what it would mean to be in a great team. What does everyday work and decision-making look like there? What is the outcome of such a team to other stakeholders such as the customers, vendors, other teams in the organization and the organization itself ?

WELCOME TO THE SANCTUARY: STORY STUDY The Sharma family loved their stay at the Sanctuary, a quaint hotel in the lap of the Western Ghats. So come summer time, they decide to revisit the same place.

Sanctuary was quick to welcome them and offered their preferred rooms and service from their previous stay. Sharma’s daughter loved the mini library which had all her favourite books in their rooms during their last visit and raced into the room to pick her next read this holiday. To her disappointment, the room’s library did not have her favourite books. In her disappointed mood, she only nibbled on her breakfast and ate a bite of her sandwich, promising her parents to eat later. The family soon left their rooms to explore the mountains.

On returning to the hotel, Sharma was surprised to see the mini library stocked with tween-friendly books in their room. His daughter was delighted. In a few minutes, housekeeping knocked their door to offer a new sandwich replacing the half-eaten one, saying, ‘Maybe now the child would eat with her new books.’ Apparently, the bellhop had witnessed the disappointment in the child’s face and housekeeping had noticed unfinished breakfast. They had then decided to act, creating customer delight. Sharma was surprised at the level of coordination and connection the team at Sanctuary had. He had two main questions: • What made the team at Sanctuary great?

• How can teams achieve this level of transformative action? High-performing, engaged teams are an asset that no organization can ignore. Let’s explore the central question here: What makes great teams great?

The research on the factors leading to the team success is far and wide. What I also find in my experience is that they are more 24

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universal than we think. The top success factors remain the same. Google’s two-year study ‘Project Aristotle’1 is the most talked about research when it comes to factors leading to team success in recent times. The company’s executives worked hard on finding the perfect mix of individuals necessary to form a stellar team. Their research began with the belief that building good teams meant combining the best people. ‘We looked at 180 teams from all over the company. We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The “who” part of the equation didn’t seem to matter,’ said Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division. Google ended up highlighting what leaders in the business world have known for a while: The best teams are mindful that all members should contribute to the conversation equally and respect one another’s emotions. It has less to do with who is in a team and more with how the members interact with one another. As John Seely Brown writes in Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation,2 It’s never enough to just tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people’s heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.

In Seely’s thinking is my research and the use of ‘world café’ conversations as participatory action research.

A WORLD CAFÉ CONVERSATION The world café is a flexible collaborative dialogue process which helps in sharing mutual knowledge or in discovering newer opportunities. It uses the dynamic living systems thinking and uses conversations to catalyse collective intelligence. What Makes Great Teams Great?

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In any world café, as their founding member Juanita Brown advices, groups of 7–10 members each come together to build a hospitable space for generative dialogue. They then explore the questions that matter. In my world café conversations, my first question was the basic question: What makes great teams great?

Encouraging full participation, each table had a list of attributes which made teams great. The café in its next step would crosspollinate and connect diverse perspectives among the group by changing the tables and continue to discuss the question. New patterns of thoughts and perspectives emerged, and they were then asked to harvest their list to pick the top 10 important factors.

After a healthy round of dialogue, each group would share their top 10. In this chapter, I share with you the collective discoveries of more than 25 such groups of world café conversations. Before we move on, take a moment to think about the questions for yourself. 1. What makes great teams great?

2. What according to you are the top 10 factors to a great team? 3. What attributes make for the team at Sanctuary (story above) to outperform customer expectations spectacularly?

Relive for a moment what would it be like to be on that team. Scan back in your memories and remember a really great team you have been part of. It could be your work team, your college cricket team, dance group or the eco supporter team in your community. Remember the special moments, passion, goals, blood, sweat and tears and the after-hours pizza box. What did it feel like? What factors made that team great? The top 10 factors in my opinion, research and observation are (there are 11 factors listed, and we will understand why, slowly): 1. Leadership

2. Clarity of goals and roles 26

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  3. Alignment of mission, vision and accountability  4. Agility

  5. Adaptive decision-making   6. Psychological safety  7. Trust

 8. Collaboration

  9. Meaningful work

10. Energy and commitment 11. Communication

A quick look at the factors over time in many groups showed patterns, insights and some deeper questions about our assumptions. The patterns easily emerged. We can see that the list can be easily sorted into two: the factors leading to engagement and factors leading to performance. Extensive work in this topic has been done by The Team Coaching Institute. Authors Phillip Sandahl and Alexis Phillips write in their groundbreaking book, Teams Unleashed: How to Release the Power and Human Potential of Work Teams,3 a model and methodology for work teams. In their book, they mention factors of productivity and positivity, and each factor has seven attributes. The Team Coaching Institute provides instruments to measure these factors and later coach teams. This book, however, looks at all factors through the lens of conversations, and the successful team formula looks something like this. Inputs of factors = Outcome of engagement and performance. Let us understand the two outcomes.

THE PERFORMANCE OUTCOME Performance is the existential outcome of a team. Teams exist to perform. There has been a growing body of research on What Makes Great Teams Great?

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high-performing teams right from the time Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith defined in their book The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization4 a high-performing team in 1993 as ‘a small group of people so committed to something larger than themselves that they will not be denied’. There are five key contributors to a high-performing team:

1. A high-performing team has a compelling direction and clarity on its goals.

2. There is alignment from members towards their roles and accountabilities. 3. The team members trust each other.

4. The team is quick to action when required. 5. The team shows great leadership.

Exploring the Five High-performing Factors Leadership A single team leader directing the workings of a great team and often linked to the hub and spokes of a wheel which moves the organization forward no longer exists. The myth of a perfect leader is dead. Today’s challenges require all members of the team to support and raise the game. Clearly, the role of leadership has changed and along with it the geometry of the organizational chart. The hierarchy is now an interwoven two-way journey renamed as ‘wirearchy’. This brings out a newer perspective: Leadership is everybody’s business. In teams, therefore, a leader is an individual, and leadership is the attribute of the entire team.

Clarity of Goals and Roles A high-performing team has the clarity of the entire team’s journey. The goals provide the destination, while the strategies and plans 28

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decide the path. Another important clarity that high-performing teams have is the role of individual team members and how it affects the overall goals of the team.

The importance of clarity cannot be overemphasized as today’s teams’ function on task interdependence and shared objectives. The clarity of individual goals and its alignment to team and organization would stimulate cohesion and confidence among the team, ultimately leading to improved decision-making and higher productivity. Furthermore, clarity of goals makes team members feel that their contribution is more meaningful.

Alignment of Mission, Vision and Accountability Imagine a meeting where the importance of a new initiative is discussed. Everyone present in the meeting agrees to its importance, and the organization decides to go ahead. Yet when the time comes to allocating resources, time and people, no one comes forward. Or maybe a team does get into place, but they face problems in everyday actions and accountability. This misalignment of mission to strategies to everyday actions creates a gap in the actual performance. A high-performing team works in alignment. In this place, there are three types of alignment. The first is the vertical alignment of ensuring that the organizational goals are in turn actioned at the team level. This basically answers the bigger question of the team’s ‘why’. Why do they exist? The second is the goals for the team and how they translate to action steps. This answers the ‘What do we do now?’

The third is the trickiest alignment, where the team decides ‘How do we get there?’ This requires the team to align to the processes and steps and the actual working towards a goal. This is the place What Makes Great Teams Great?

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where cohesion and collaboration are severely tested and highperforming teams come out successful.

Learning Agility Research has found that one of the core predictors of highperforming teams is ‘learning agility’. The very definition of ‘learning agility’5 is in line with the goals and objectives of an agile team: to proactively gather information, learn from new experiences, adapt in the face of change and integrate insights into effective new behaviour. Measuring and understanding the ‘learning agility’ styles of individuals can be applied on a group level to the construction of learning agile teams with members who complement one another, leading to a much higher return on investment. Existing teams can be reviewed for strengths and weaknesses and areas for development.

The capacity to learn quickly from experience sets high-performing employees apart from their peers. Two studies found that when employees have powerful experiences on the job, they are able to take lessons from these experiences in order to increase their long-term success. Those managers and executives who were decidedly curious, adventurous and enjoyed learning new things were more likely to be higher performers than their peers. Finally, high-performing managers and executives were able to reflect on their experiences in order to further understand which behaviours were useful and which behaviours were not in order to increase future effectiveness.

Learning agility is more than just trial-and-error learning to throw a solution at a problem until something works: It involves taking in new information from one’s environment through feedback, collaboration with others and keeping up to date with emerging trends, as well as other strategies, to make an informed decision about what will work and making that decision quickly.

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Adaptive Decision-making In last two decades, global competition, technology, economic conditions and shorter innovative cycles have brought in a lot of uncertainty in teams. They now have to deal with complex new challenges, but the path itself is riddled with ambiguity. However, it is evidently seen in research that high-performance teams consistently outperform the expectations of their key stakeholders. One of the biggest reasons is their adaptive decisionmaking. This refers to the way they make decisions, manage risk, foster change and solve problems. How does this happen at the team level? Adaptive decision-making requires team members to: •

Anticipate issues that may arise in future

•

Understand the cause and consequences of the issue and the possible actions

•

Appreciate the interdependability of all the variables

•

Plan for alternatives

•

Act on relevant problems and opportunities

THE ENGAGEMENT OUTCOME Employee engagement is a workplace approach, resulting in the right conditions for all members of an organization to give their best each day, be committed to their organization’s goals and values, and be motivated to contribute to organizational success, with an enhanced sense of their own well-being. However, engagement has emerged as a contested construct, whose meaning is susceptible to shrinking, fixing, stretching and bending. According to David MacLeod,6 ‘This is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential.’ What Makes Great Teams Great?

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Employee engagement is about positive attitudes and behaviours, leading to improved business outcomes in a way that they trigger and reinforce one another. Employee engagement is about our employees feeling pride and loyalty, working for our organization. There are five prominent factors which contribute to a highly engaged team as explained.

Psychological Safety Psychological safety describes individuals’ perceptions about the consequences of interpersonal risks in their work environment. It consists of taken-for-granted beliefs about how others will respond when one puts oneself on the line, such as by asking a question, seeking feedback, reporting a mistake or proposing a new idea. Kahn7 defined psychological safety as ‘being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of selfimage, status or career’. ‘If I do this here, will I be hurt, embarrassed or criticized?’

Psychological safety describes a climate in which the focus can be on productive discussion which enables early prevention of problems and accomplishment of shared goals because people are less likely to focus on self-protection. Removing the fear of speaking up can promote innovation by freeing people up to suggest novel or unorthodox ideas.

The team learning process consists of iterative cycles of action, reflection and adjustment. What is being learned, made more effective or disseminated are routines for conducting work which accomplishes goals. For example, successfully creating a ‘network of teams’—an agile organizational structure which empowers teams to tackle problems quickly by operating outside of bureaucratic or siloed structures—requires a strong degree of psychological safety. 32

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Trust Trust is the expectation that others’ future actions will be favourable to one’s interests and not to be confused with the earlier concept of psychological safety, which refers to a climate in which people are comfortable being (and expressing) themselves.

Trust is created in relationships and is built over time. It is built from promises kept, and it is built from differences resolved when those involved can walk away feeling heard and honoured, whatever the outcome. The perceived psychological safety is often considered a prerequisite to building trust, and therefore they go hand in hand and are sometimes confused as being the same.

Trust is a fundamental element for performance. High-trust teams are faster at problem-solving, resolve conflicts quicker, brainstorm more freely, are more inclusive and are less hesitant to contribute. Trust building is good for business. Low-trust teams pay a heavy transactional price which slows them down in a world where speed and agility are necessary for competitive performance. Creating and maintaining a culture of trust is challenging. Finding ways for team members to build closer relationships is one simple and effective way to improve team trust. The second way to build trust is to engage in disagreement or conflict successfully and survive.

Collaboration Teams working together, solving problems, finding solution and creating new ideas are the drivers to collaborative efforts. Increasingly, teams are split between different locations, different time zones and even different languages, making team collaboration imperative to operational excellence.

Buffer in their The 2020 State of Remote Work report8 found that while remote work is growing in popularity and the majority of What Makes Great Teams Great?

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their survey respondents intend to continue working remotely for the rest of their career, communication, collaboration and loneliness continue to be top challenges for remote workers and remote organizations. This makes collaboration a top priority for all teams in future.

Meaningful Work Finding meaning in what we do is the best form of engagement. Meaningfulness of work can be explained as the positive contributions and significance a person’s job brings to their life and the satisfaction that an individual derives from their job. In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, expert Daniel Pink9 discusses results from over 40 years of research into motivation in the workplace, and he vehemently argues the basic human need to find meaning and control in what they do. How do teams ensure that they provide meaningful work? By aligning individual aspirations to team goals, showing the larger picture and creating a culture where employees understand how their work contributes to the larger picture of the organization.

Energy and Commitment Thank God it’s Monday! is the best way energy and commitment can be described. The way the members of a team look forward to working and being part of the organization, their emotional attachment brings the energy and the commitment. Here, the commitment is more than just a tick in the employee engagement survey to the questions like ‘Will they recommend this organization to a friend?’ or ‘Do they see themselves in the same organization in three years’ time?’ The commitment here is affective, an emotional connection to be a part of the team.

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TEAMWORK IS NOT NATURAL FOR MOST OF US While teamwork is never questioned its place, it is not easy to achieve that pedestal. Why? Most of us are brought up, educated and trained to do our individual best. We have never been taught to work together and look at the team as a single entity. When do team members need their teams the most? When time is short, problems crop up or work increases. But when teamwork is needed the most, teams are most likely to slip back to working as individuals. An understanding of the factors that make teams great shows us a picture of what can be out there. We are at the crossroads of information and action. We know what makes a great team great. Now we look into the ‘how to become this great team’. To succeed and move forward, we need to ask the four most important questions. 1. Where are we now?

2. How to become the highly engaged, high-performance team? 3. What is stopping us?

4. What is the role of conversation in all this?

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THE ENGAGEMENT–PERFORMANCE MATRIX The engagement–performance matrix helps teams answer their first question: Where are we?

The dynamics of the engagement and performance outcome of teams can be mapped on a graph to get a simple four quadrant matrix. Keeping the engagement on the vertical axis, with highly engaged teams in the upper half and low-engaged teams below, allows the performance to be mapped on the horizontal axis, with the right side to be high-performance teams and the left side to be low-performance teams. The ideal quadrant for a team is of course the high-engagement, high-performance one on the upper right corner. To understand the current quadrant we are in, look at the engagement–performance matrix. Each quadrant has its basic identifying features mentioned. Now we need to understand where we stand and, more importantly, where we want to go. Let us look at the quadrants in brief.

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The High-performance–Low-engagement Quadrant This is the most common quadrant that many teams find themselves in. Teams are naturally result-oriented and are driven by the numbers, bottom-line, profit metrics. Such teams have very high energy and come out as the ‘we will climb any mountain’ team. Celebrations are always results-driven, and the process does not get the importance, performance does.

Since performance is the most tangible form of measurement, the softer skills get lost. The need to succeed builds into the team, and they may work in silos when in a cross-functional team. It is completely possible that such teams consider other teams as competitors to their resources and even success. This ‘I am right’ behaviour may then slowly seep into the team, and individual members can also be working in silos inside the team. In the longer run, this will be the team which achieves high numbers—not only in sales and profits but also in turnover and very low-engagement scores.

The single-minded result focus often builds pressure and stress and may lead to burnout. Within the team, that need to win can also breed mistrust and a constant defensive behaviour, making meetings a battleground. The balance, if sought, should include engagement factors and not work more on results.

The High-engagement–Low-performance Quadrant This is the happy team. Many teams are in this stage when they are newly formed or when they have completed a big task and are living the celebration time. On a longer period, a low-performing team will face consequences from the organization. The high engagement levels are seen in the team’s comfort levels and the importance they give to others’ opinions. The meetings in these teams are courteous and inclusive and avoid friction. The conversations will include all opinions, questions will be asked What Makes Great Teams Great?

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without hurting or judging and the feel-good levels are always maintained. They believe in the team consensus for any decisionmaking, and their commitment to the team is phenomenal.

This need to always create a comfortable work environment leads them to skirt the issues which require deeper dialogue. They also avoid conflicts, and therefore the absence of the devil’s advocate may lead to issues in decision-making. This way of working will naturally keep the efforts moderate, and hence the team may not be working at full capacity. Comfort and commitment also build incompetence and mediocrity inside the team. As mentioned earlier, in many teams, this is a temporary phase and they slowly move into increasing performance.

The Low-engagement–Low-performance Quadrant A team with both engagement and performance in the low is a sad place to be in. Team members here have lost both hope and happiness in working towards a better future.

Such teams are often characterized by members feeling that they carry the entire burden on their own or that no one cares and blaming the management, boss, market and environment.

The lack of connection and motivation also means that the team is not able to see the meaning in their work and its connection to the organizational vision. Such teams, therefore, tend to work only in the short-term focus and in silos. So a customer care team in the low–low zone would work to placate the complaining customer in the single call and not really look into the problem or transfer this information to the department which can create the required change. By not being able to appreciate the meaning of their role in being close to the actual customer and therefore being the ears and nerves of the company, the team may consider themselves as the place which gets dumped with the bad decisions of the organization. 38

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The High-performance–High-engagement Quadrant This is the quadrant that every team, leader and organization aspires to be in. The team members here are confident of their roles and their contribution to the team. They respect each other and trust the commitment of others. The individual competence and the trust combined create a magical situation. Such teams are not only result-oriented but also have great collaborative strength. They respect others’ opinions, are inclusive in their conversations and, at the same time, do not shy away from a healthy argument.

Their energy is high, but it is not mindless competition to win individually but a healthy competition to beat the odds as a team.

When the respect and trust are high, and individual competence and clarity are high, there is a synchronized flow of efforts among the members, and when problems arise or new ideas are needed, the team delivers on innovation and excellence. The high-performance–high-engagement quadrant is the place we all want to be in. That triggers the second question asked earlier: How to become the highly engaged, high-performance team?

THE PERFORMANCE–ENGAGEMENT PARADOX Can we have a team which shows a high-performance culture and is highly engaged? If such teams are possible, how can we become one? That is the second question.

Deconstructing an average day in the life of a team in the current business environment, it is filled with tasks which require speed. A sense of urgency always prevails. Combined with complex situations, ambiguous or changing circumstances, teams are constantly at conflicting tension points—between strategic and operational, between own results and cross-function results, between creative innovation and an empty inbox, and between What Makes Great Teams Great?

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getting things done and working as a connected team. This is the engagement–performance paradox. A paradox is ‘an apparently self-contradictory (even absurd) statement, situation or proposition which on closer inspection is found to contain a truth reconciling the conflicting opposites’.

Yes, it is possible to have a team that shows a high-performance culture and is highly engaged when we stop thinking that people and results are functioning as conflicting opposites and, in its stead, consider them as interconnected, contradictory forces of a natural whole.

In Chinese philosophy, ‘yin and yang’ are used to describe how polar opposites or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world and how they impact each other.

In the same way, engagement and performance are the yin and yang of a successful team. If we are able to see them as a whole and not in opposing parts, every team is a highly engaged performing team. The bigger question is: How can we look at the engagement and performance from a holistic angle and what kind of tools can we use every day to ensure such a transformation happens?

THE ERA OF REACTIVE TALK What is stopping us from having this holistic success in being a highly engaged and high-performing team?

Most of us would say that we want to have shared leadership and more collaboration in our teams. We want to foster holistic thinking and leverage diversity. But our old ways of conversation create the inertia; they hold us back from moving towards transformative team action.

The reason that this level of engagement and performance is not common is because there is a distinct lack of quality conversations. 40

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A common argument can be that we live in an age of networking and communication. There is no dearth of conversations. In our interruption-driven, chatter-filled world, it has become very important for team members to be ‘available’ at all times. Being ‘responsive’ has threaded its way into our lives so much that emptying the inbox, attending every meeting and being reactive in the shorter term have become more important success points. This sets the trap for reactive team conversations. This does not create engagement or performance. While the focus remains on reacting and responding to every short-term issue, long-term growth, innovation and connection with team members get lost.

The way people talk together in teams is now acknowledged as central to the creation and management of knowledge. According to Alan Webber,10 former editor of Harvard Business Review, a conversation is the means by which people share and often create what they know. Therefore, ‘the most important work in the new economy is creating conversations.’

THE ROLE OF CONVERSATION Complex issues cannot be solved by individuals alone, and in organizations, it may also require several teams working together. Yet when faced with complex, conflicting or even creative issues, teams minimize their interaction, cover up and take rigid positions. The result is compromises, lack of trust and tenuous action taking. A conversation is not just a feel-good human interaction mechanism. In fact, a talk is the cornerstone to action. A talk leads to new levels of connected and coordinated action. Quality conversations lead to aligned action.

Consider as an example one of the high-performance factor: clarity of goals and roles. How does this clarity enter the team? How do members know their goals and their specific roles? It is obviously through conversations. What Makes Great Teams Great?

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How can leadership translate their vision down the organization to ensure that each individual feels like they are part of the whole? The famous poet Rumi shares, ‘You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.’ This is exactly how individuals and teams should feel about their work as part of the vision of the organization. Without conversation, how else can this be made possible? How can we build trust, work collaboratively and guarantee psychological safety inside our teams and organizations? It is through interaction and therefore in our conversations.

So the role of conversation is like a transforming framework which when team members come in can achieve gargantuan performance through collaborative efforts. Talk is action!

Talk is the first part of action, and action is the only way a talk should end. Ideas in a conversation should lead to implementation. Leaders in a conversation should inspire action.

Managers in meetings, presentations and negotiations should influence and be influenced.

Team members should be the connected, engaged think tank of an organization. Conflicts should lead to deeper understanding. Talk should generate action!

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team)

Where Is Your Team? 1. How much do you look forward to coming to work each day? 2. What do you do together to energize each other? 3. Is this a fun team to be in?

4. What are the activities that energize this team most and least? 5. How does this team manage routine, unpopular tasks?

6. Deeply look into your team and their behaviour and mark your levels of engagement and performance on a five-point scale, where 1 = Excellent; 2 = Above Average; 3 = Average; 4 = Below Average; 5 = Very Poor for the factors listed below. S. No.

Team Engagement–Performance Factor

1

Leadership

2

Clarity of goals and roles

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Alignment of mission, vision and accountability Learning agility

Adaptive decision-making Psychological safety Trust

Collaboration

Meaningful Work

Energy and commitment Talk Action

Your Score

7. Looking at your answers, which quadrant in the engagement– performance matrix would you place your team in? 8. For each of the factors that you have marked 3, 4 or 5 in question 1, take a moment to write down what the actual issue is.



Issue #1:



Issue #3:



Issue #2:

9. What according to you is the role conversation plays in your team?

NOTES AND REFERENCES   1. Charles Duhigg, ‘What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team’, The New York Times Magazine, 2016, https:// www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learnedfrom-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html   2. John Seely Brown, Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation (Harvard Business Review Press, 1997).   3. Phillip Sandahl and Alexis Phillips, Teams Unleashed: How to Release the Power and Human Potential of Work Teams ( John Murray Press, 2019).  4. Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance Organization (HarperCollins, 2003).   5. Olaf Korsten, ‘Learning Agility: What It Is and How to Assess It’, 2020, https://harver.com/blog/learning-agility/   6. David MacLeod, Engaging for Success (BIS, 2009).   7. W. A. Kahn, ‘Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work’, The Academy of Management Journal 33, no. 4 (1990): 692–724, https://doi.org/10.2307/256287  8. Buffer, The 2020 State of Remote Work, 2020, https://lp.buffer.com/ state-of-remote-work-2020 What Makes Great Teams Great?

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  9. Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books, 2009). 10. Alan Webber, ‘What’s So New about the New Economy?’ Harvard Business Review, January–February, 1993, https://hbr.org/1993/01/ whats-so-new-about-the-new-economy#:~:text=In%20the%20 new%20economy%2C%20then,that%20learning%20happen%20 is%20conversation

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CHAPTER 3 THE ROLE OF CONVERSATION

How is it that sometimes, as if by magic, people create something together that has beauty, power and life? A sports team that suddenly moves to another plateau where the game is no longer the game but a vehicle for an aesthetic statement (and yet the game is still there). A symphony orchestra that disappears into the music.

Peter M. Senge, in the Afterword of The World Café

Peter M. Senge, the author of the widely acclaimed book The Fifth Discipline, continuing his Afterword in The World Café,1 questions: Do the recurring examples of collective creating only happen in sporting events and performing arts? Can we create this symphony in our teams?

I frequently observe the dichotomy of engagement in our teams as an educator and facilitator, and I am sure that you notice them as managers in your meetings. The classroom is noisy and the students are talking, rapidly completing last-minute assignments, preparing for an upcoming exam, crouched low in their desks sharing a WhatsApp joke or working on a complex problem—they are engaged. Then the class begins. Slowly, the group wears the formal mask, cautious

and waiting. As the lessons begin, there are a few questions; the students slowly fight for their views, questions and answers, and somewhere a few are silent and detached from the entire co-learning. The interaction becomes polarized or polite, but the easy engagement and connect of the informal pre-class scenario does not happen. This is common when the team walks into a conference room for a meeting. The backslapping and water cooler camaraderie stop the minute they step foot into the projector-installed oval table conference room. How can we collectively create the atmosphere of connection and performance in our teams and society through every conversation we have? The role of conversation is perhaps the most misunderstood of all human actions. These misunderstandings—the conversation myths—create ineffective conversations which lead to mistrust, disengagement and low performance. I’ve never met anyone who welcomes negativity, relishes being mediocre or is comfortable with apathy. Nor have I met anyone who enjoys being manipulated, revels in the flagellation of arguments or delights in endless performance-reducing distractions. Of course, while no average being seeks these experiences, every average talk falls prey to them from time to time. The single biggest reason is the talk–action misalignment. A better understanding of the role of conversation is important at this point.

MEET MAHESH’S TEAM: STORY STUDY Mahesh’s team assembled for their meeting in the conference room. The long oval tables matched their expressions. They knew the agenda: their team satisfaction survey (TSS). 48

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Mahesh breezed in with a booming, ‘Good morning, Team’. A few quasi-enthusiastic ‘morning’ were mumbled in reply. With a flourish, Mahesh hooked up his laptop, and there beamed on the projected screen their TSS results. As usual, the team had performed well on their individual key performance indicators (KPIs). There were issues on cross-team collaboration and client relationships, but the results remained mostly positive. It was the intangible, soft skill of engagement, trust, respect and loyalty which took the hit badly, for the third continuous year. Mahesh had to come up with explanations and solutions to his seniors by evening. So he decided to not hold back any punches. ‘We need to accelerate our efforts on the four items of engagement, trust, respect and loyalty and move that needle. What do you say, team?’ A few half-hearted ‘yeahs’ circulated the table. Unfazed, Mahesh continued, ‘Okay, this is our attack strategy. We are going to concentrate on trust this year.’ The team knew what was coming. Last year, the big plan was to attack engagement, and Mahesh decided to increase their weekly meetings to an extra mid-week meeting with instructions on fun agenda. The team did not ever want to remember the complete fiasco that was their Saturday team lunch. The company rules allowed Saturday to be an optional work day, and employees could choose to not work or work from home. But the team lunch idea meant that Mahesh’s team had to show up to office every Saturday. His favourite quote during this attack idea was ‘It’s not work if we have fun’ and yes, ‘the team that eats together stays together.’ After such ideas, the only one surprised at this year’s TSS was Mahesh. The Role of Conversation

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He continued to explain his attack strategy. ‘We are going to form a core, “You Can Trust” team. They will speak with all members of the team and I want everyone to trust this core team implicitly.’

After a few more minutes of talk by Mahesh, the team moved out, passively accepting his ideas. By now, they knew that the ‘You Can Trust’ team will prepare a few questions, chart their answers and mostly they can go back to work. This was better than last year’s ideas. Gowri Parekh looked on as Mahesh presented her the past efforts and his current strategy. She decided to intervene.

That evening, Gowri mailed Mahesh’s team. The contents of the email were simple. She asked them to observe what contributes to team satisfaction.

‘Please come prepared to share at least one story of the best practice you have seen to your next weekly team meeting’ were the email’s clear instructions.

This was a shift from what Mahesh’s team was used to. First, they were asked to look at what worked when they knew that their scores were low. That was looking for water in a desert. Second, Mahesh always had the ideas and plans, but now the team was asked to observe, not just come out with some ideas. When the team met the next week, Gowri lead the meeting. She praised the team for their performances and Mahesh’s ideas. Then she asked about the stories.

The next half an hour saw the transformation that was missing in their team. Slowly, the stories emerged. They spoke about the times someone helped, stories of how just being there and simple chitchat made the day better. They spoke of the adrenaline rushing drive of the team when an important project came up; the stories had insights, pride, loyalty and everything the TSS did not capture. One best practice story narrated a time of working with a particularly difficult client. The entire team decided to come up with 50

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all possible reactions and pitched each other to these reactions, making their cohesive effort so strong that the client was delighted. As the meeting ended, Gowri did not need to create a core trust team, the trust had just improved in the team, so had engagement, hope and resilience. Conversations are the invisible threads; they maintain the rhythm of the team. David Bohm2 in his book On Dialogue narrates a beautiful story: Some time ago there was an anthropologist who lived for a long while with a North American tribe. It was a small group of about 50 people…. Now, from time to time that tribe met like this in a circle. They just talked and talked and talked, apparently to no purpose. They made no decisions. There was no leader. And everybody could participate. There may have been wise men or wise women who were listened to a bit more—the older ones, but everybody could talk. The meeting went on, until it finally seemed to stop for no reason at all and the group dispersed. Yet after that, everybody seemed to know what to do, because they understood each other so well. Then they could get together in smaller groups and do something or decide things.

WHAT IF TALK IS THE FIRST STEP IN ACTION? There is something familiar and sad about the interactions of Mahesh. We see them regularly all around us. Trust, engagement, loyalty and creating a positive culture are universal problems.

Most teams and leaders in corporates, politics, schools and colleges, sports, and families struggle with this same problem. It’s not that they don’t care. They all care and very deeply too. The problem is also not dependent on funds, power, networks, leadership or intelligence. The missing piece in the puzzle is the alignment from talk to action. The Role of Conversation

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Talk is the process of transforming thinking and inducing action through collective learning and inquiry. That was the most important lesson Mahesh learnt in the meeting. He had come prepared with ideas to increase engagement. In the meeting, he understood that the meeting did not lead to engagement, the talk itself was the engagement. Mahesh also noticed how the team interacted better when they had something concrete to speak, like the stories. These stories gave their voice a credibility that the Saturday lunch idea could never bring on.

In the course of the next few months, Mahesh requested Gowri to coach him and this led to his clear understanding of the entire talk–action spectrum.

Talk and action, when looked at as silos, will remain unconnected and separated. In contrast, Gowri showed how talk and action can co-evolve as means and ends. By seeing the end—‘the action’—as more real than the means—‘actual talk’—we stop the fundamental process of achieving any goal. Talk is action in the making. Exploring this thinking, it is easy to see talk as the essential and fundamental means. One of the most important shifts in seeing talk as a means to action is to reimagine our view and look at them as a single spectrum—part of an integrated whole.

THE TALK–ACTION SPECTRUM Conversations are the social glue which ties team members together. In fact, teams are described as complex, overlaid, communication networks. This book contends that engagement and performance in groups are conversation-driven phenomena. 52

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There is a chain reaction from talk through action as has been seen in many research and theories. The talk–action spectrum develops constructs taken from many such communication theories, most notably Herbert Clark’s theory of conversational grounding, Austin’s speech act theory, Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, Obasi H. Akan’s concrescent conversations, Bohmian Dialogue and the Dialogue theory of William Isaacs. Talk catalyses collective insights which build trust. Trust connects people, leading to cohesive engagement. Engaged teams can then collaborate well to harvest energized action.

1. Collective insights: Talk opens up thematic portals of collective knowledge sharing, relationships and possibilities. Ideas in our minds suddenly become real and take wings when we start to share and talk about it. Abdolvahab Baghbanian and Ian Hughes3 have extensively researched that in unfamiliar situations, executives who made decisions collectively would make a significantly more efficient and effective decision than counterparts who made decisions individually. This is because in new and uncertain situations, collective intelligence creates better decision-making. As people share their insights, the magic in the middle unfolds, and the sense of wholeness emerges. The theory of conversational implicatures is attributed to Herbert Paul Grice,4 who observed that in conversations, what is meant often goes beyond what is said and that this additional meaning is inferred and predictable. Grice proposed that participants in a communicative exchange are guided by a principle which determines the way in which language is used with maximum efficiency and effect to achieve rational communication. He called it the cooperative principle.

The cooperative principle: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. The Role of Conversation

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This cooperative principle is an umbrella term for nine components which guide how we communicate. These nine components are grouped together into four categories, called the maxims of conversation: the maxim of quality (truthfulness), the maxim of quantity (informativeness), the maxim of relation (relevance) and the maxim of manner (perspicuity). This life-affirming concept of conversations creating collective insights is also part of Bohmian Dialogue, the world café, appreciative inquiry, positive coaching and many other historical and cultural conversation perspectives. The collective insights add credibility to the ideas and individuals, and slowly this credibility builds trust in the team.

2. Cohesive engagement: The talk that builds trust relationships is the key driver to promote synergy and connect among the members of the team. Thomas, Zolin and Hartman5 in their research prove that communication improves trust between employees and supervisors, and that trust in turn leads to greater employee engagement.

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One study by Iyer and Israel6 showed that organizations which communicate effectively are four times as likely to report high levels of employee engagement than organizations which communicate less effectively. Quirke7 argues that the key to creating engagement lies with a company’s leaders. He further discusses that it is their job to communicate in ways that connect the dots for their employees to see how their individual success contributes to the organization’s success, as this is argued to win commitment. This creates a space for authentic conversations to be nurtured for ideas, expectations and goals to be set and processed. Now the team just loves being in this space to learn and contribute. Maylett and Warner8 have found that employees will not engage until they have capacity, reason, freedom and know-how to do so. This increased responsibility is an excellent example of the participative problem-solving process, which is argued to Talk Action

increase engagement. This space in their minds is the cohesive engagement. Engagement is the means to action.

3. Harvest energized action: How high-performing teams contribute to task completion is a highly relevant issue in complex organizations. Organizations recognize that a highly engaged workforce can increase innovation, productivity and bottom-line performance while reducing costs related to hiring and retention in highly competitive talent markets. Akan, Jack and Mehta9 have extensively studied the relationship among concrescent conversation, psychological safety and team effectiveness. They argue that a concrescent conversation ignites a climate of psychological safety, resulting in ‘joint action’ necessary for positive team outcomes. Engaged teams use the space to perform their best. Their conversations are open, future-looking and filled with possibilities. Searle10 challenged Western civilization’s most sacred paradigms, the belief that talk is not action. In developing his philosophy of language, Searle coined the term ‘speech acts’, hypothesizing that ‘Speaking a language is engaging in a (highly complex) rule governed form of behavior.’ He contends that speech acts bring into existence a social reality which did not exist before their utterance and that the hearer must now act/react to this new reality.

Herbert Clark11 takes this idea one step further by emphasizing the joint nature of such actions. A joint action is an action that cannot be accomplished by a single individual. It requires two or more individuals to cooperate and coordinate to complete a joint action. To succeed, the two of them have to coordinate both the content and process of what they are doing. This is called grounding, according to Clark. The Harvard Business Review Analytic Services12 study found that two metrics most utilized to measure the outcome of employee engagement initiatives are employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. The Role of Conversation

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Rob Markey,13 head of Bain & Company’s Global Customer Strategy and Marketing Practice and co-author of The Ultimate Question 2.0 believes that ‘the only way to have consistently really high levels of customer loyalty is to have a workforce that is so enthusiastic, creative, and energetic that you outperform competitors in service delivery, execution, and product design.’

According to Markey, companies which are strongest in fostering high levels of employee engagement do the following three things: 1. They put employees in positions where they have the ability to exercise judgement in doing their jobs and learn over time through feedback from customers (internal or external) to do that job better.

2. They continually link employee performance back to the broader goals of the organization to make customer goals better. 3. Culturally, their missions are heavily staked in offering employees autonomy, mastery, purpose and a strong sense of affiliation. Structurally, this means that top managers need to open up the decision-making authority, allowing power and responsibility to be decentralized from headquarters out into individual teams.

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The talk now becomes the action, as ideas are thrashed, steps are taken and strategies are put in place. This energy-filled action is how every conversation should conclude. The talk–action spectrum identifies the associated factors which together form the basis for establishing the role of conversations in team engagement and performance. These factors or factor range locate a relation along a continuum.

WHAT STOPS TEAMS FROM SUCH COHESIVE ENGAGEMENT AND ENERGIZED ACTION? The nature of our conversations is far more important than we know. The belief of ‘all talk and no action’ stems from conversations that do not add value, are unproductive and many times slow our progress. Such conditions happen when there is a misalignment in the talk–action spectrum.

A misalignment can be any intention or conversation which does not look at the collective, positive and holistic growth of the team. There are four common misalignments to the talk–action spectrum.

Problem-focused Conversation Mahesh began his meeting with an attack strategy to address a problem. The biggest driver of the conversation was the problem. This turned the conversation into a defensive battle by holding engagement and trust as an enemy. With Gowri’s coaching and his own reflections, Mahesh realized that he had begun the whole meeting on a defensive, attacking stance, when that stance was exactly the problem. In this reflective mindset, he knew that he cared for his team and truly wanted to see them evolve into an engaged and energized team. The difference was immediately visible when Gowri simply reframed the questions from challenging the problem to a collaborative way to discuss the problem by looking at what works. The Role of Conversation

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The problem talk is a toxic conversation style and creates deviations and misalignment from talk to action. Problem talk traps the decision-making in the problem zone, thereby action, even if taken, will not be a solution but an attack on the problem. We could see this in the story study, as engagement and trust became a problem, which then became a goal and were treated as the battle enemy. In reality, engagement and trust are parts of the talk–action spectrum and cannot be taken out of them as a separate goal. They need to be viewed as an ally and a means to action.

In the words of Marilee Goldberg,14 ‘The moment of questioning is also the moment of choice, which holds the greatest leverage for effective action and positive change.’

This approach finds wide explanations and support in appreciative inquiry. David Cooperrider15 formalized the appreciative inquiry process in a structured 5-D cycle which catalyses a unified, positive, solution-focused talk, and the first step is designing the future.

Negative Framing Negative framing is the prevention-oriented message which looks at the problem alone. Mahesh focused on the negative aspects of the survey, and his words were also the loss-mitigating kind.

On the other hand, positive framing looks into the possibilities. Gowri first appreciated the team on their areas with high scores and asked them stories of what worked. This simple positive framing brought the conversation back to the spectrum, and the team began to pour in their collective ideas. Taking a quote from David Cooperrider: ‘We change best when we are strongest and most positive, not when we feel the weakest, most negative, or helpless.’ Negative framing focuses on the wrong, fear-inducing, closed corner of the issue. This creates the misalignment in the talk–action 58

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spectrum, as it hinders building trust and connect in the group. When people talk about what works, they are future-focused and positive, while negative framing creates a post-mortem of every issue and we all know that post-mortems happen only to the dead. Conversations are living systems; they need nurturing, a forwardlooking approach and positive framing. In their research, Jeffrey and Laurie Ford,16 authors of The Four Conversations, actually documented that ‘the type of conversation you have with the people around you have a profound impact on your experiences, relationships, and accomplishments.’

Minimizing Dialogue The biggest derailment to the talk–action spectrum are often the unnoticed, missing and minimized dialogues. The quasienthusiastic team response to Mahesh’s ideas, more importantly their silence in the meeting, creates minimized dialogue. This is a symptom of a disengaged team.

Even when the team had productive members who did well in their individual KPIs, their lack of trust, engagement and loyalty will in the long run affect performance. In a successful team, the levels of trust and engagement are high, and the defensive dynamics and minimized dialogues are low. The key is the connection, the conversation.

When teams lack the capacity to be open and honest and to speak with candour, they tend to sacrifice their collaborative energy on creating falsely amicable environments and non-defensive dialogue. This demonstrates their empty words, and such talks never end in action.

The Confusing ‘How’ The best of intentions is not good enough if there is no clarity on the process, the detailed action plan or the resources. Many The Role of Conversation

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conversations are great in their intentions and even inspiring in their actual speech, but when it comes to action, they miss the last piece of the puzzle. There are three levels of misalignment at this stage:

1. There is clarity on what should be done but no plan on how it should be done. Mahesh came up with the idea of building a core trust team but what will the team do to build trust was unclear. 2. There is a plan for the how, but resources and people are not taken into account. Individual aspirations and ideas may not match with the idea or sufficient resources are not accounted for. The Saturday lunch idea had a plan, but individual team members did not like this. It was clearly against their wishes to not be given a choice on how they spent their Saturday. 3. There is a lack of clarity on who should be involved, who is accountable and what happens when things go wrong. This could be clearly seen in all the ideas of Mahesh. When the engagement plan did not go well, the difficult conversation of why and what should be done, went unaddressed. The team’s accountability was with Mahesh, and jumping to a new idea this year showed lack of clarity in involvement and accountability.

Such confusing ‘how’ processes create misalignment among aspirations, accountability and action. As these misalignments point out, when talk is not aligned towards action, it affects every process and activity that owes its effectiveness to collective insights.

Like Mahesh’s team, we might spend endless precious time in meetings, and yet the collaboration and performance will be woefully insufficient.

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than the other, individuals working in silos and conversations between manager and team riddled with defensiveness are the allpervasive effects of the talk–action misalignment.

Teams in essence are simply a collection of conversations. People are therefore connected not just by the goals, strategies and economics of work but also by their conversations and relationships. The talk dictates the relationship, and the relationship directs economics. Therefore, talk is action.

A BETTER TALK How can we create conversations that align to engagement and action? How can we have teams to just start a conversation and immediately have members join in the discussion, talk honestly and deeply, and at the end of it have the clarity of the next steps and each other’s roles as part of a whole?

Is there a design or a seven steps to great conversation formula? In the words of William Isaacs17 in his book Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together, ‘If you meet a method on the road, kill it.’ What he meant is that a conversation is an experience, and our intellectual know-how, theories and methods will in fact get in the way of our ability to hold the space for good talk. Such solutions would have been simple. Unfortunately, our conversations are a lot complex than that, and formulas and quick fix solutions may just not cut it. To find the way to a better conversation, we need to first understand what we already know about conversations and the myths we believe about them.

A quotation attributed to Carl Jung18 says, ‘The most important question anyone can ask is: what myth am I living?’ In other words, what window am I looking through and living from in a conversation? The Role of Conversation

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CONVERSATION MYTH #1: CONVERSATION IS AN INDIVIDUAL SKILL A conversation is a human ability, and often many theories consider it as an individual skill. But a conversation does not happen on its own. Have you ever felt that you meant one thing but the other person understood it differently? Have you had similar conversations with two different people and had two completely different reactions? Have you felt that you get along well in a dialogue or a small group, but when group size changes, it becomes difficult to get across your point?

It is understandable that there is a variability element attached to conversations, which means that it is ‘not’ an individual skill. If conversations were an individual capacity, we will not have to face the consequences of variability in people. We will have simple formulas which can work across humanity. We can easily have the conversation quality audit and grade them. Unfortunately, this is not possible, as conversations do not depend on just one single person. There are three elements in a conversation: the conversationalist, the listener and the space between them at that time. A conversation therefore is like a bridge; it connects the conversationalist with the listener in that space and time. By thinking conversation as an individual skill and trying to change the individuals without looking at the listener and the space element, an inefficient system is created, where the variability loops in.

Talk Action Principle #1: Talk Drives Action at the Moment Talk should be viewed as a dynamic and complex living system. The complexity means that it shows sensitive dependence to even the smallest of conditions which can then snowball out of proportion. Arguments, debates and conflicts are generally based 62

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on overlapping reasons begun from simple misalignments. The complexity of a talk is like a game of Jenga. It is quite simple stacking up, but as the complexity increases, it may fall down if the foundations are weak.

The dynamic nature of the talk ensures that there is no single way or formula to get the talk right every time. Every person, team and situation are different, and this dynamic nature dictates that there is no single truth but only that which emerges during the conversation.

Talk when considered a living system supports that action and change will happen at the moment of the talk. As the words are spoken, the collective minds and emotions react in that space in that moment. If talk drives action at the moment, it is imperative that we keep our conversation holistic, open and filled with curiosity.

CONVERSATION MYTH #2: IMPROVING THE WAY WE SPEAK; THE WORDS WE USE CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM The issue with talk is not the absence or dearth of words. We, in fact, live in a world of too many words. The social media, hundreds of TV channels and OTT platforms have ensured that we are buried in endless flow of content. It is just that they have begun to mean lesser now. The problem therefore is never talk; it is tying the talk to action.

One of the prominent reasons many engagement and conversation interventions fail is because they cure the symptoms and not the root. The actual conversation is the tip of the iceberg. It leaves out the intentions for having the conversation and the clarity of action alignment to get things done. Just being polite, asking a few good questions and maybe even encouraging fellow members to share can create a better conversation The Role of Conversation

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experience, but this is not enough for action to happen. The meetings will still be ineffective, and feedback and innovation will still be superficial. Leadership will be unidirectional from the top, and influence will not lead to change.

While conversations can be fluid and complex, they have a structure and therefore even though a strict formula may not work, a broad framework can be followed.

Talk Action Principle #2: The ‘Why’ Directs, the ‘What’ Expands and the ‘How’ Compels Action A conversation, like many things in nature, follows the golden circle popularized by Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’.19 The why is at the centre, and it directs the what and the how. In a conversation, however, this is a very balanced circle. In fact, it is a pyramid. The why is our intentions, and they direct the talk. Intentions steer our conversations in the direction they want; however, the other two elements need to balance it. The ‘what’ is the actual dialogue: the words, body language, listening and giving space. The dialogue expands the intentions, enriching it and giving it the value it requires. The action element however is incomplete without the how: an action design aligning people, process and resources. A talk focused on the ‘why’ will be flying 50,000 feet above the ground and can get lost in that big picture. A talk focused only on the ‘how’ will be under a microscope and may miss the forest for the trees. A talk focused on the ‘what’ will be polite, minimizing and directionless. For a talk framework to be effective, it should have all three elements: intention, dialogue and aligned action design. 64

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CONVERSATION MYTH #3: A ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL TALK IS ENOUGH Who do you go to when you need advice? Who do you go to when you need to confide? Praise in public and criticize in private is a common adage. Why then do we follow a single way to speak and react in all situations?

Conversations are made up of people, and the dynamic nature of a conversation means that a one-size-fits-all talk is not enough. People have an invisible conversation range they are comfortable with. This changes with the size of the group. The nature of talk in a one-to-one dialogue is completely different from the talk in a small group. The larger the size of the group, the more formal and narrower the comfort range. The dynamic also exists when the purpose of the conversation is crucial, important or simply a chat among friends.

Talk Action Principle #3: There Exists a Talk Comfort Range for Everyone The complexity, comfort, trust and engagement largely differ when the size of the group and the purpose of the talk change. There are nine types of conversations divided based on the size of the group, purpose of a conversation and difficulty. We will discuss this in detail in Chapter 5. The kind of intention, dialogue and action required in a conversation between two friends deciding a weekend trip is completely different from a serious performance conversation between a manager and an employee or discussing an undiscussable issue with a team member. All of these issues may require a different comfort range when talking in a small group or even virtually.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team)

Step 1: Imagine you are working in a positive conversational workplace which you would like to build.

How do people behave inside this workplace? How do they interact with each other and the outside world? Write brief answers. Use present tense to describe. Be specific. If you can use imageries, paint a picture or even doodle it.

Step 2: Think that if your workplace were like this, what would change for you? How would it affect your team?

Think in terms of collective insights, cohesive engagement and harvesting energized action.

Step 3: What misalignments do you find in the talks around you that stand in your way to create a positive conversational workplace? Work on the four talk–action misalignments and briefly analyse which ones sabotage your talks. Write now on what you want to do about it? How do you think you can make progress? And how will you know?

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005). 2. David Bohm, On Dialogue (2nd ed., Routledge, 2004). 3. Abdolvahab Baghbanian, Ian Hughes, Ali Kebriaei, and Freidoon Khavarpour, ‘Adaptive Decision-making: How Australian Healthcare Managers Decide’, Australian Health Review 36, no. 1 (2012): 49–56. 10.1071/AH10971. The Role of Conversation

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  4. Herbert Paul Grice, ‘Logic and Conversation’, in Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard University Press, 1989), 22–40. Originally published in Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, eds., Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (Academic Press, 1975), 41–58.   5. G. F., Thomas, R. Zolin, and J. L. Hartman, ‘The Central Role of Communication in Developing Trust and Its Effect on Employee Involvement’, The Journal of Business Communication 46, no. 3 (2009): 287–310.   6. S. Iyer and D. Israel, ‘Structural Equation Modeling for Testing the Impact of Organization Communication Satisfaction on Employee Engagement’, South Asian Journal of Management 19, no. 1 (2012), https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Structural-EquationModeling-for-Testing-the-Impact-Iyer-Israel/3ac3d95dd5a67599e c11b02994df0fac5bfcd425   7. B. Quirke, Making the Connections: Using Internal Communication to Turn Strategy into Action (Gower, 2008).   8. T. Maylett and P. Warner, Magic: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Employee Engagement (Greenleaf Book Group, 2014).   9. O. H. Akan, E. P. Jack, and A. Mehta, ‘Concrescent Conversation Environment, Psychological Safety, and Team Effectiveness: Examining a Mediation Model’, Team Performance Management 26, no. 1/2 (2020): 29–51, https://doi.org/10.1108/TPM-07-2019-0079 10. J. R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge University Press, 1969). 11. H. H. Clark, Using Language (Cambridge University Press, 1996). 12. Harvard Business Review, The Impact of Employee Engagement on Performance, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, n.d., https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/achievers/hbr_achievers_ report_sep13.pdf 13. Ibid. 14. Marilee Goldberg, The Art of the Question: A Guide to Short-term Question-centered Therapy (Wiley Series in Couples and Family Dynamics and Treatment,1997). 68

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15. D. Cooperrider and D. Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change (ReadHowYouWant.Com, 2011). 16. Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford, The Four Conversations: Daily Communication That Gets Results (ReadHowYouWant.com, 2010). 17. William Isaacs in his book Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together 18. Carl Jung quotes. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1212519 19. Simon Sinek, ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’, 2009, https:// www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

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CHAPTER 4

THE TALK KALEIDOSCOPE

Conversation is the way that humans have always thought together. In conversation we discover shared meaning. It is the primal human organizing tool. Even in the corridors of power, very little real action happens in debate, but rather in the side rooms, the hallways, the lunches, the times away from the ritual spaces of authority and in the relaxed spaces of being human. In all of our design of meetings, engagement, planning or whatever, if you aren’t building conversation into the process, you will not benefit from the collective power and wisdom of humans thinking together. These are not ‘soft’ processes. This is how wars get started and how wars end. It’s how money is made, lives started, freedom realized. It is the core human organising competency.

Meg Wheatley

Conversation is humankind’s greatest gift. It is the freedom to express our thoughts, emotions, needs and knowledge. Talk should ideally set us free. And yet it is in the field of conversation than any other endeavour that man’s freedom has been severely compromised. Freedom of speech and expression might be a fundamental right written in the pages of our Constitution; however, when it comes to actual talk, the invisible chains bind us:

opinions, social conditioning, rules, etiquette, perceptions, culture—the list is long. All conversations are not the same. We may be able to hold a decent talk with a friend, but when the group size changes from 2 to maybe 6 or 20, the quality of the conversation changes.

During lunch hour, a simple talk may have led to the team scribbling ideas on the back of a napkin, and they may have rushed back to put together their proposal. But the idea, now flashed across the room in a conference hall, changes in its passion and enthusiasm and turns defensive and protective.

Or maybe you observe team members laughing and talking at a party or in the corridor and yet when it comes to an important, vital meeting, they turn polite and minimize the talk. The opposite can happen too. Some people are uncomfortable with small talk and can speak only if there is enough reason to warrant a conversation. Navigating conversations is many times like watching Catherine Zeta-Jones repeatedly wriggling and slithering those red laser beams in the 1999 movie, Entrapment. Conversations sometimes feel like stepping on a minefield, and that is because most of us have a talk comfort zone.

What Is a Talk Comfort Zone? Imagine an invisible line, a glass ceiling of sorts. Every conversation has this line. Some are higher and some are lower. There are always a few things we don’t want to speak about in a particular conversation. There is a glass ceiling to every conversation. Inside the line is our comfort zone. Here, the talk is honest, open and collective. Here, the talk leads to action. On the other side of this line, outside the comfort zone, lies the dark murky world of silence, polarized talk, polite stunted talk or aggressive and rude talk. The Talk Kaleidoscope

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It is important for every individual and team to identify their comfort zone and to know where the line is drawn and if we can raise it a bit higher to include more conversations. Why is there a zone? Is it the same for all? At all times? What changes them? There are many questions a space like the talk comfort zone throws out. The challenges of Suraj may help.

Suraj loved to play football. At the age of six years, he kicked the ball and that was football to him. He would kick it and try tricks with the ball every evening outside his house. He never had to worry about anything.

One day, young Arun, his neighbour, wanted to join. From that day onwards, the two boys would play. But something changed. Now Suraj would wait for Arun to join the play. They then followed rudimentary rules of the game. They had a goalpost. Now Suraj also wanted to win along with kick that ball. The rules changed. In a few years, both boys entered their school team. They now had a coach. They had rules, regime, discipline and also roles. They could not just kick the ball but had to hold their position in the team. Now the team became a single entity, and they all worked for their school team. In his final year in school, Suraj knew that the best player would get to join the state team. The dynamics changed again.

Like football was for Suraj, conversation is just a human behaviour. But like Suraj realized, there is a lot of difference between individual activity, playing with friends, training for a game in the school team and playing a match for the state team. In conversations, we have various lenses—with the number of people in the conversation, the intention and purpose of the conversation or the level of importance, emotional investments and difficulty in the conversation. 72

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Like I had mentioned in the first pages of the book, conversations are like a kaleidoscope, and learning where we stand is important.

THE TALK KALEIDOSCOPE The talk kaleidoscope is at first an invitation to view your conversations, to know where you stand, and to understand what stance you take and what your perspective in any talk is.

Consider the talk kaleidoscope as the ‘You are here’ point that you would see in a map. The talk kaleidoscope shows a set of nine lenses, based on my research on classifying conversations based on how people relate to them. There are three factors used to classify conversations: 1. People

2. Purpose 3. Priority

People factor is the size of the group. The conversations as seen in the talk comfort zone change with number of people. Many classifications talk of dialogue and group conversation. In the talk kaleidoscope, another unique lens is also added—that of selftalk. What we speak to ourselves is the biggest lens with which we see the world, and therefore it is an important conversation lens. Another important lens is the medium. Here, the medium is also included in the people factor, and the lens of virtual talk is discussed. Purpose refers to the agenda or topic of the conversation. Most conversations come under the need to initiate or ideate; the need to influence, lead, inspire or steer a group; or the need to engage and connect with people. In the talk kaleidoscope, these lenses are the lens of initiative talk, the lens of influence talk and the lens of engaging talk.

Priority is the place that causes the debates, the difficulty in speaking and the largest source of missing conversations. The Talk Kaleidoscope

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High-stake, high-emotion talks come under the lens of difficult talk. As priority is a personal factor, an open lens is also provided for you to fill in. Remember that the conversations you are currently having have had or are planning in future. These are conversations that linger and stay with you, either as a fond memory that brings a smile on your face or like an untreated wound festering inside you. Whatever reaction such conversations bring, they can be divided into a few common lenses. Shake them a bit, and new views emerge. Ask a friend to view the lens, and a new perspective emerges. Allow a bit of time to pass, and the lens changes again. That is why our conversations are a kaleidoscope. And this tool—the talk kaleidoscope—is an invite to understand where you stand. Consider the following four steps while you navigate your way through the kaleidoscope.

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Step 1: Know Your Talk The talk kaleidoscope works exceptionally in revealing your perspective, passion, drivers, social attitudes, comfort zones, listening, rapport, emotional maturity, etc., while you hold your conversations. It can be viewed by individuals or together as a team. While looking through the kaleidoscope, remember at all times:

1. You can explore your conversations in your own interpretations, from your own viewpoint and bring your perspective. 2. You can choose any, a few or all lenses in the kaleidoscope either individually or in combination.

3. There is no set way to look at and express your thoughts and feelings about the conversations you have. You can choose to group them, find patterns, grade them, prioritize or ignore as you choose.

4. One lens is uniquely yours—a blank lens that you can choose to add any of your conversations from past, a talk you are currently having in your life or one that you are preparing for. 5. Feel free to meander through the talk kaleidoscope and start and stop anywhere. Choose your path.

The Lens of Self-talk Most of us have a talk running inside our heads. This can be our mental to-do lists, re-runs of past conversations, random observations about the environments, practice sessions of possible future dialogues or a visualization of our dreams.

These internal narratives that we hold about and with ourselves are called self-talk. These are a mix of both conscious and unconscious beliefs and perceptions.

Sigmund Freud first created the idea that we have both conscious and unconscious levels of thought, with unconscious cognitive processes influencing our behaviour in ways we don’t realize. The Talk Kaleidoscope

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How we speak with ourselves is important. Consider the following questions as you look at the lens of self-talk. 1. Identify the intention of your internal dialogue. Do you know why these particular thoughts keep running in your head?

2. Notice what kinds of internal dialogue you hold with yourself. Do you see a pattern? 3. Analyse the pattern. Are they future-looking, positive or action-oriented? 4. Are there any narratives that ruminate on the past, are negative and stop you from taking action?

5. What conversations that you have with yourself will you want to change? How will that affect your life?

The Lens of Dialogue Conversations among two people are referred to as a dialogue in this context. It can be with friends, family, team members, line manager or simply a stranger. It can range from a simple ‘How are you?’ to talking for hours on an idea, a problem or just watching the sunset together.

The dialogue is the actual test of your relationships and how deep it is. Depth in a conversation, especially in a dialogue, is moving beyond just facts towards real feelings and our courage to hold them, listen and value the person. Of course, there is nothing wrong in remaining at the fact exchange state. Exploring the fact stage is safe like swimming in the shallow end of the pool, but a dialogue has a larger scope for creating deeper connections and to engage in real feelings. Look at the dialogues you have in your interactions and think how deep you swim. Some dialogues are shallow, some really deep and some swimmers want to go to the deep but are holding on to the sides of the pool or their floats. These floats and sides of the pool represent crutches we use in a 76

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conversation. Some of them are culture, time, blaming the other for their inability, topic, situation and setting, etc.

Depth in a dialogue is about personal comfort, and you should be able to draw your own levels. When two people speak at different levels of depth in a dialogue, conversation conflicts happen. So as you look at your dialogues, ask yourself the following questions. 1. How much of your conversations are in dialogue?

2. How deep are some of your most important conversations?

3. Are you comfortable talking about feelings and real potential talk or do you remain at the fact exchange zone?

4. Which of these conversations would you want to change in depth? It can go deeper or shallower. Why? 5. How would your relationships and your life change with the changes in your dialogue?

The Lens of a Group Talk Helen Keller said, ‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.’ Groups and teams can literally move mountains and part oceans as can be seen by the growth in our construction industry. But an average meeting can also become a frustrating volley of ping-pong ideas going nowhere.

Conversations in groups are said to have a dependence on the number of people in a group. When the size of the group is small of four or five people, the conversation takes the form of an interactive dialogue, and the members in the group give importance to the interaction and depth in dialogue. When the group size increases, the group slowly takes the form of a speech. The audience in such a group then look for the dominant speaker. The dynamics in a larger group is not on the depth within individuals in the group but the authenticity each individual is ready to bring to the group. The Talk Kaleidoscope

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In a group conversation, the interaction also shifts, and being heard becomes the dominant factor. In such places, the opportunity to hold real and deep conversations gets lost in the struggle to maintain or become the dominant speaker. Listening gets sacrificed every time in such conversations. Taking turns, respecting every idea and opinion, and inclusion are important aspects in a group talk. As you look into the conversations you have in groups, keep the following questions in mind. 1. How is your group talk?

2. What is your comfortable group size?

3. Think about a few group conversations you have had. What about it was your greatest memory? 4. Do you see patterns in your group talk? Are you comfortable with it?

5. If not, what patterns do you want to change? How will you invite your group to this new outlook?

The Lens of a Phone or Virtual Talk Conversations today have increasingly moved away from real faceto-face encounters to technology-mediated talks either on phone or a video call.

For more than a million years, human species communicated with words, tone and body language and words hold a mere 7 per cent of the pie. The remaining 93% is the biggest difference the change in medium brings to conversations.

In a virtual conversation, words remain, but the tone and its effectiveness depend upon the strength of your Internet connection, and body language is lost in transaction. Many conversational scientists do not consider virtual conversations real. Whether we agree to the idea or not is irrelevant, 78

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as conversations are moving virtual, and that is real. The COVID19 pandemic has brought the virtual conversations in the front, therefore, as we explore our comfort zones, it is important that we consider the change in medium. 1. How comfortable are you in virtual talk?

2. What kind of conversations do you have virtually?

3. When in a virtual conversation, what is the intention running in your mind? 4. What challenges do you face talking virtually? 5. Do your virtual conversations lead to action?

The Lens of Influential Talk We continuously participate in influential talk every day in our personal and professional lives. Conversations which have the power to shift attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of others without a direct exertion of force or command are called influential conversations.

The effects of poor influential talk can be seen directly in poor performance. Most sales and customer problems for example,— longer buying cycles, deals missed or lost, disgruntled customers, unresolved issues, even development of new ideas, bringing new change or performance problems.

The very premise of influence depends on our ability to align ourselves with others, accept change and understand others’ viewpoint. What kind of influential talk are you having in your life? As you think about the conversations you have, look into the following questions. 1. What kind of influential talk do you generally have?

2. In any conversation, reflect on your intention and think if you are ready to change or to be influenced. Why or why not? The Talk Kaleidoscope

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3. How do you align yourself to another person during the conversation? 4. What are your success factors? 5. What are your challenges?

6. What about your conversation would you want to change?

The Lens of Initiative Talk Initiative talks are the ones that begin the conversations—in a relationship, a network, a new idea or a new place. These are also the conversations that happen prior to a deeper dialogue. The biggest question in the initiative talks is the element of small talk and agendaless conversations: Can you hold a conversation when nothing high-stake or high-emotion is there to say? If you are wondering that why are we having this conversation at all, then small talk is not a comfort zone for you. Small talk has two important characteristics: talking to just about anyone and talking just about anything. These two can get confused by misinterpreting small talk as talking to strangers and talking about trivia. But consider a few scenarios. • Talking with your child about the fun he had in a recent school practice session is small talk. But with a person very important to you and a topic that is not trivia, it holds the smile of your child. • Talking to a team member about their holiday last week is small talk, but with not a stranger and definitely not trivia. •

Talking to the lady next to you in a metro or a waiting line is small talk. It is with a stranger and it can be about trivia, but the experience may turn into friendship.

• Talking to a few influencers and fellow members in a networking event or a party is small talk. It is with strangers and it is about understanding the person. 80

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When you look at small talk in your life, consider the following.

• How comfortable are you speaking with just anyone and about just anything? •

What are your intentions in a small talk?

•

If there is a discomfort, explore its nature.

• In speaking about low-stake topics, what is your depth of conversation? •

Is there anything you want to change in your small talk lens?

The Lens of Engaging Talk Think about conversations that made you laugh or kept you entertained. Think of conversations that made you feel truly valued and understood. Think of conversations in which you made others laugh, listened truly and made them feel valued. Such conversations build trust and are the engaging talk. The lens of engaging talk depends on genuine interest, in becoming a talk sponge, someone who actively lives in the now of the talk. It depends on the energy we bring in to the conversations, and it totally depends on not trying to use the space for persuasion and pitch. This builds psychological safety and a space for individuals and teams to build stronger relations. Looking at the lens, question yourself the following. •

How involved are you in any conversation?

• What kind of conversations bring more engagement for you? What kind of conversations bring disengagement? •

What are your intentions while building engagement?

•

What if your best efforts don’t build engagement?

•

How will a truly engaging talk change your life? The Talk Kaleidoscope

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The Lens of Difficult Talk The single squirm-inducing phrase ‘We need to talk’ sets the premise of a difficult talk.

Often difficult talk is considered to be conversations that no one wants to hear or participate and is dreaded. It can be holding a conflict, confronting someone, giving critical feedback, managing up, saying yes, saying no or even saying sorry. At work, home, with friends and enemies alike, difficult talk is one where the discomfort levels are naturally high. But what actually makes a talk difficult are two aspects: when the outcome is a high-stake one and where personal emotions are involved. Usually, the two go in together, for example, asking for a raise is a high-stake and emotionally involved talk. It can turn difficult.

1. Look at the conversations you have. Which ones turn difficult for you? 2. How do you react to a difficult talk?

3. How would you actually want to react to a difficult talk?

4. How do others feel about you in a difficult talk? What has been the feedback in such situations? 5. What change, if any, would you want to bring in your lens of difficult talk?

Your Lens Are there any conversations outside the above eight lenses that you want to look into? Write them down. Do you want to concentrate on a particular talk? Write it here. Are you preparing for a conversation in the future and want to use that? Use this space to prepare. As you write down your specific talks, consider the following. 82

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1. What are your intentions in this talk? What do you want at the end of it? 2. Who are you really inviting to your talk? Are you looking at a person or a label? 3. What will make this conversation a success according to you? 4. What steps would you need to take for that?

5. How will your life change because of this successful conversation?

Step 2: Navigate the Talk Kaleidoscope Now that you know what each of the lens in the kaleidoscope stands for, look at them as a whole. Look at them in parts. Try and look at conversations as a collage of a few lenses. For example, performance feedback is a dialogue, maybe a difficult talk, maybe virtual. Understanding which lens is comfortable for you, which lens is important and which lens is difficult gives direction to our awareness about our conversations.

Possible Questions to Ask Yourself as You Look into the Whole Kaleidoscope 1. Which talk lens feels most important to you? 2. What conversations are you drawn towards? 3. What conversations are you avoiding?

4. Look at the lenses with relation to each other. Does group size affect you? Are you able to initiate, engage and influence talks with all groups and in all mediums? Are you able to hold low-priority talks and highly emotional and difficult talks with all? With anyone? The Talk Kaleidoscope

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As you look at each conversation lens, following are some questions you may wish to ask. 1. What does this ’conversation lens’ mean to you?

2. What thoughts and feeling arise when you think about the ‘talk lens’?

3. How does your view to ‘talk lens’ change when you look at it at a personal level and at a team/organizational level?

4. How does your relationship to ‘talk lens’ change when you look at it in relation to the other lenses?

5. Does your conversation change at different points in time, based on people, situations, moods and hunger? 6. Does the same talk lens change with the different roles you have at work, in life, in time and in the world: leader, citizen, family member, supporter, enabler, catalyst, nurturer, etc.?

Step 3: Reflective Response As you look into the talk kaleidoscope, the conversations can bring up strong thoughts, emotions and experiences onto the surface.

Become very self-aware of the thoughts that come to you. Awareness enables responsiveness. Journal your thoughts. There is a reason there is no measurement metric in the talk kaleidoscope. It is a tool to help you become aware and understand you talk but does not judge and grade them. Use the kaleidoscope to know your conversations, and once you are comfortable, move to the next chapters to understand how to improve them.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team) • Are you looking for ideal conversation states?

• As you look into the talk kaleidoscope, reflect on the thoughts that course through you. • Introspect: What could be the missing conversations, if any? • What do you do when conversations don’t work?

• Is there anything else that may open up for you while considering these questions? Please journal your thoughts.

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CHAPTER 5 NAVIGATE FROM TALK TO ACTION

All results come from prior conversations. All of them: the good ones, the bad ones, and the so-so ones. They come from the conversations we have and the conversations we don’t have; from the conversations we do well, and the conversations we do poorly. Our conversations don’t just describe, they generate.

Bob Dunham

When we approach every vital talk with the belief that it could become the most important conversation we might ever have, we can create a positive influence.

How often do we think of our talk in anticipation to inspire action, to create meaning or to influence change? If you did, what tools would you want in your kit to navigate every conversation? Revisiting the three talk action principles: •

Talk drives action at the moment.

•

Different talks require different comfort range of the talk.

•

The ‘Why’ directs, the ‘What’ expands and the ‘How’ compels action.

The talk action toolkit has two important elements which help us nurture every conversation we can have: 1. The talk kaleidoscope to map our current conversations lens 2. VITAL framework to navigate from talk to action We begin our navigation from talk to action with the mantra that ‘All action come from prior conversations.’ The genesis of any action is the result of conversation prior that sets the direction, possibility and outcomes. Unfortunately, this stance is a choice and many times part of the cognitive blindness in us. The choice means that either we choose to adopt the mantra to have the required conversation that generates desired outcomes or not. Let me share an example. The vice-president (VP) of a large MNC mentions that one of his team members was not working as he was required to. His role involved meeting potential vendors and clients, and he was routinely late. This had caused a loss of goodwill and trust from these businesses. On asking what the VP did to address the issue he said, ‘I have tried everything. Nothing works with this guy’ It is not just this one VP. Many managers and leaders feel that they have done their all and yet the team does not produce results. They are playing victim to a situation. In case you feel you have a similar situation and feel that ‘Talking is just not going to help’, please ask yourselves, ‘If not talk, what else can you do? Fire them? How many will you fire?’ Remember, we do not control other people. We can only influence, inspire, lead and engage. And the only path to go there is the path of conversations. The fact that many managers fall into this victim trap is a cognitive blindness. Cognitive blindness is the inability to understand something due to the lack of a precept of knowledge, understanding or belief in a necessary fundamental concept. Cognitive blindness can be a result of inadequate intellectual capacity for 88

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understanding something or it can be a result of emotional, cultural or cognitive biases.

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons1 performed a famous experiment to illustrate cognitive blindness, called the invisible gorilla test. They asked their research subjects to watch a basketball game. Subjects were asked to keep track of the number of passes between players. The subjects’ given objective was merely a distraction. The real observation the researchers were curious to see was whether subjects noticed a man in a gorilla suit walking across the court. It might seem impossible to miss something so strange, but more than 50 per cent of subjects failed to see the gorilla at all. Because our teams and organizations are blind to the fundamentals of how action is generated, many managers miss the gorilla—the talk prior.

According to Judith E. Glaser in her book Conversational Intelligence, ‘We are now learning, through neurological and cognitive research, that a “conversation” goes deeper and is more robust than simple information sharing. Conversations are dynamic, interactive and inclusive. They evolve and impact the way we connect, engage, interact and influence others, enabling us to shape reality, mindsets, events and outcomes in a collaborative way. Conversations have the power to move us from “power-over” others to “power-with” others, giving us the exquisite ability to get on the same page with our fellow humans and experience the same reality by bridging the reality gaps between “how you see things and how I see things”. If we cannot talk together, we cannot work together. The questions are: • How can we, as individuals, learn to align our talk to action?

• How can we create such talks in situations where people are not initially willing to engage?

• How can we move our talk to a deeper level where the individuals come together to create collective thinking and meaning? Navigate from Talk to Action

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• And lastly, how can we conclude every talk so that people leave feeling they are part of a larger whole and yet know their individual roles and action?

The key to answering them requires us to address the three fundamentals, the triad of human interaction.

THE TRIADIC ARCHITECTONIC OF CONVERSATION: INTENTION, DIALOGUE AND ACTION One of the most ubiquitous architectonics in social thought is the neo-platonic development of the triad: the true, the beautiful and the good.2 Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the triadic value of human society has flourished, sometimes as a whole, sometimes in fragments. The truth referred to the objective pursuits, the beautiful meant the subjective and aesthetics, and the good remained the collective and just action.

William Isaacs,3 in his book Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together, writes about the triad of voices—the voice of language, the voice of feeling and the voice of power—and explains that dialogue includes all three of these voices. More recently, of course, Simon Sinek simplifies the triad in his famous TED Talk ‘Start with Why’4 and explains the golden circle: the why, the what and the how as parts of how leaders inspire action. Most fundamental and common among these theories is that there is a triadic structure of human engagement. Talk to action follows this fundamental triadic architectonic of conversation: ‘The intention, the dialogue and the action. It takes all three to ensure that the talk–action spectrum is completed’.

Intention In a talk, it is common to feel a lack of sync between what we want to say and what we actually say. The often-heard phrase 90

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‘Oh! But I did not mean that’ proves the number of times this sync is missed.

A common meaning for intention is that ‘it is a mental state that represents a commitment to carrying out an action or actions in the future’. Therefore, this is the first step in any conversation. In the beautiful words of Carlos Castaneda,5 ‘In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.’ I prefer Castaneda’s words to describe intention, as it is a positive energy and force and should not be confused with or simplified as aims or goals.

Intention in a conversation encompasses all the feelings, attitude, the what we want out of this, why we are talking, our desires for the outcome and how we feel the conversation should take place. Think of intentions like a Schrödinger’s cat.6 I am sure you have undoubtedly heard of the most infamous thought experiment: A cat is placed in a box with an atom of a radioactive substance Navigate from Talk to Action

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which has a 50 per cent chance of undergoing a radioactive decay in the next hour and thereby kills the cat. At the end of the hour and just before you open the box, what is the state of the cat? Simple logic says that it can be either dead or alive. But the mathematical description of quantum physics says that the state of the atom is indeterminate—the cat is equally alive and dead at the same time.

In many ways, that is how our intentions are: complex, probabilistic and situational till the actual talk happens. Our intentions can be anything and a bit of everything till the talk begins.

Simplifying this weird thought experiment into daily life— the behaviour of a team and their conversations in a meeting is probabilistic, and making a prediction of how this meeting will end requires collapsing this range of possibilities into a single guess. But just before the meeting begins, there is equal chance of it going great as it is of going bad. Now this is the place of intention.

Can we cognitively use intention to ensure that the ensuing talk goes well? Exploring this possibility, how should intentions be and how they are? Intentions have two major counterbalancing attributes: 1. Curious–judging

2. Collective–individual

The Curious–Judging Attribute When the intention stems from curiosity, there is a clear positive thought to look into the talk and understand. Curiosity is a rare attribute though. We are not taught in school, college, home or work how to be curious. Therefore, curiosity needs to be intentional. When we work from the premise of curiosity, we give space for differing opportunities, perspectives and possibilities. 92

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When intentions are not curious, it paves way for a judging mentality. When people enter a conversation with presupposed judgement, their intentions are to win. They get lost in the ‘I am right, you are wrong’ mind space. Edward de Bono sums up the curious–judging intent beautifully in his classic text Teaching Thinking: The need to be right at all times is a more powerful objective than most in determining the direction of thinking. A person will use his thinking to keep himself right and then believe whatever position that thinking has generated. This is especially true with more able pupils, whose egos have been built up over the years on the basis that they are brighter than the other pupils. Such a person finds it very difficult to admit a mistake and almost as difficult to acknowledge the value of someone else’s idea. Thinking is no longer used as an exploration of the subject area but as an ego support device. Thinking is used to support an initial judgment. The objectivity required in truly skilful thinking is completely lacking. Yet the arguments that result may be brilliantly logical and consistent. Navigate from Talk to Action

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The Collective–Individual Attribute Every conversation is an invitation to think collectively. It begins with the intention to be open and create a pool of shared thinking. The premise of the collective requires us to be open to be influenced. Asking ourselves, ‘Am I ready to be influenced?’ at the beginning of any conversation is a great way to clarify our collective or individualistic intent.

Based on these four attributes, four kinds of intentions are possible.

Collective–Judging Conversations in the collective–judging place augment positive emotions for the collective but do not inspire any forward movement or action. These intentions make us feel good. The intention is to keep the peace, be polite and stay in the comfort zone.

Individual–Judging Judging intentions without the collective emotion turn individualistic in its perceptions. The intention slowly feeds only the ego and becomes protective of individual stance. Such conversations lead to debate, blame and arguments.

Individual–Curious When individual intentions are curious, they become reflective. They want to know more and understand. Such conversations are important when trying to understand others, but the talk does not seek to add value on its own.

Collective–Curious A VITAL conversation works on the collective–curious intention. Here, all participants are curious and want to collectively think, share and expand the value of the conversation. Conversations with such intentions lead to deeper engagement. 94

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Dialogue A dialogue is the process by which we create the space of sharing deeper levels of thinking. It helps to develop greater capacity to reflect and transform our collective thinking and catalyses the emergence of shared meaning.

The short film Change Your Words, Change Your World,7 created by online content specialists Purple Feather on YouTube, sends out the message: It’s not so much what we say as how we say it that matters.

We see a man sitting on the street. Many people walk past, ignoring him. A few coins are dropped in his tin next to a sign that reads: ‘I’m blind. Please help.’

Then comes an obviously well-heeled woman who pauses, picks up his sign, scribbles something on it and props it back up again. As she walks away, we hear the clink of coins being dropped, followed by more clinks, and then more. The coins keep rolling in by more clinks, and then more. A while later, when the same woman returns, the man recognizes her footsteps and asks, Navigate from Talk to Action

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‘What did you do with my sign?’

She bends down, touches him on the shoulder and says, ‘I wrote the same, in different words’. The changed sign says: ‘It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.’

The dialogue is the actual conversation between people. The talk kaleidoscope clearly shows the differing lenses and their perceptions and how our conversations change based on our comfort zones. The field of dialogue though is not always effective. We can hold conversations on two counterbalancing attributes 1. The ask–tell attribute

2. The positive–negative attribute

The Ask–Tell Attribute Ask-based talks are questions which work towards understanding, expanding awareness, generating ideas, and provoking new thoughts and perspectives. The intentions for such thoughts come from the curiosity attribute. It is important to note that all questions are not an ask. Questions that provoke judgement and debates and come from a place of devaluing people like using sarcasm or insult are not inquiry. Tell-based conversations are of a closed thinking kind, where the sentences are declarative in nature. Such conversations do not leave much space for sharing other views and slowly become minimizing.

The Positive–Negative Attribute The positive attribute is one which is future-looking and adds value. In a talk, this can be done in any number of ways—sharing ideas, acknowledgement, gratitude, suggestions, asking great questions and listening. Such ways of engagement stimulate positive action. 96

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The other end of the spectrum are the negative talks. All conversations that devalue people or ideas, criticize options, judge without listening and involve participation with the sole intention to dominate are negative. Such conversations exhaust us emotionally.

At this point, it is imperative to understand that critical thinking is a positive attribute, while criticizing is not. And understanding this difference creates momentous change in our conversations.

Based on these four attributes, four kinds of dialogue are possible.

Positive Tell Non-directional positive statements like ‘Good job, Steve’ fall under the positive tell category. They create positive emotions, but the talk does not have scope for interaction or sharing. Such talks are good in quick, short-term situations.

Negative Tell When the same statements turn negative, they devalue the person. The problem with negative is that even if these are just statements, they destroy morale and create roadblocks to progress. Since our minds are wired for negative, the destruction by the statement ‘Lousy job, Arun’ is far higher than the esteem boost of ‘Great job, Arun.’

Negative Ask While a talk based on inquiry is a great one, not all enquiries are positive. Negative queries tend to revolve around the problem and take a ‘minimizing the problem’ option. This way, the context of the conversation gets limited. Negative ask talks can also be judging in nature. Navigate from Talk to Action

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Positive Ask The VITAL framework supports only dialogues which are enquirybased and are positive. This kind of conversations allow for the collective curiosity to build and provides psychological safety, and the freedom to express authentically draws people towards a forward-looking solution focus. The aim of successful teams should always be to hold conversations in this space.

Action Climbing Mt Everest is one of the most challenging personal goals anyone can have. Very few people have the physical, mental and emotional capacity to even achieve these levels of performance. In our conversations, actions share the same attribute—they represent the culmination, the harvest of the collective thinking that emerges out of our talks. What does action in a conversation mean?

Action is that step which we take after all the talk happens and we ensure that our shared thinking doesn’t move to the posttalk black hole. But there are various kinds of action from our talks. •

In a performance conversation, an action coming out of the conversation can be a change in behaviour or method or approach of doing something.

• In an influential conversation, an action can be to close the buy-in of the idea influenced and move to the next steps. •

In a difficult conversation among peers who avoid confrontation and either talk behind or remain silent, the action plan may simply be an agreement to continue to talk directly in future.

Once the intention is set and a generative dialogue is developed, the participants should be ready to take action. Therefore, this step finds meaning in their plans and a sense of accomplishment. 98

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Alignment of action plan with aspirations and accountability is the emotion behind this step. The reason many conversations fail at this step is the misalignment between the group plans and individual actions. This then clearly pulls down the group action at all. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

How do we accomplish the Everest-level actions from our conversation? One small task at a time.

Conversations for actions should have the clarity on what’s to be done, who should do it, how is it done, do we have the resources, the support and the timelines to complete. Such conversations will make failure a lot more difficult than success.

VITAL FRAMEWORK TO NAVIGATE FROM TALK TO ACTION Teams are just a collage of conversations. Some of them are successful, some not so much. But these conversations weave a fine thread, and it is in their mesh that the team thrives. The insights about what makes a great team, understanding the role of conversations, the talk–action as a single spectrum and the triadic architectonic of intentions, dialogue and action are the fundamentals of any successful conversation.

‘To as many reasons as conversations, every conversation can be made positive.’ But how do we operationalize these theories, experiences and reflections into a conversation?

That’s what the VITAL—a positive conversation framework– provides. This book uses the term VITAL as a powerful acronym which operationalizes action inside a conversation. If managers and leaders want to master their conversations, then this framework is not discretionary, it is imperative. The five steps in the VITAL framework are provided in the following table. Navigate from Talk to Action

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Visualize

Invite

When conversations are first visualized, we become aware of our intentions, context and purpose of the talk. As individuals, teams or organizations, are you visualizing your talks and preparing for it first? And, importantly, are you supporting your team in their internal conversation? This first step is about the initiator. If that is you in the conversation, run your internal dialogue first to prepare.

An invitation in a talk sets the context. It defines the scope, the direction you want the talk to take and who are the participants. An invite also shows that you care about the collective ideas. This step specifically looks at distinguishing between the elements in a conversation: initiator, participant and topic/problem.

For deeper, generative conversations, a safe space Transform needs to be created and held by all the participants. to This is the conversation chrysalis—a space conversation where individuals can come in with the unique chrysalis thoughts and speak without being judged.

Action design

Learning in reflection

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The central outcome of any good conversation is action. This step looks into the gaps that stop talks from reaching action steps and a four-level clarity to address them. The 3 steps are: 1.  identifying goals 2.  integrating commitment and accountability 3.  Establishing support.

Learning is itself a form of evolution, and although sometimes it’s hard to believe, our conversations are changing for the better. Learning in reflection is a conscious and deliberate process of reflecting on the conversation and action. This step introduces the talk–action–reflection (TAR) cycle.

The VITAL framework can be used by a large variety of people from a large number of backgrounds.

For instance, maybe you lead a team in your organization and face the typical leadership challenges for your team—they are polite and run superficial meetings, you feel they are minimizing their individual capacity or you see conflict-ridden atmosphere. Maybe strategies are not delved deeper or targets are bounced off each other as a ping-pong game and accountability falls down. The VITAL framework can help you move to a deeper level of conversation and connection with your team.

Maybe you are a project manager managing cross-cultural teams. Your team brings with it problems in multicultural hues in perspective, thinking and action. The VITAL framework enables people to make sense of their differences fostering understanding and trust among them. Or maybe you lead and nurture students in a classroom. Your challenges lie in inculcating collective learning, listening and exhibiting curiosity, respecting differences and building resilience. The VITAL framework empowers educators to shift their learning from a passive mode to an active experience. Of course, conversations are the bedrock of every relationship—as friends, parents, children, spouse or sibling. The VITAL framework helps you navigate these conversations with ease to build deeper, honest relationships. Whatever your role in life or organization is, you are part of a team. The VITAL framework works on three levels.

Individual: Deeper conversations for every individual will build better relationships, leadership and personal growth. Let us stop skirting our thoughts and talk on the outer edges of the problem, confidently deep dive. To experience the fun and joy of human interaction and consider everything on our path as an opportunity to connect. Navigate from Talk to Action

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Teams: This book is targeted at teams, and the benefits are maximum here. The VITAL framework helps improve all the 10 aspects of a highly engaged, high-performing team in the talk–action spectrum. Organization: It builds a positive conversational workplace by ensuring that conversations form the foundational rhythm on which engagement and performance thrive, creating a positive conversational culture.

We all want to be the collaborative, fun loving, high performing, adrenaline rushing, totally loyal team and yet that kind of teams are a rarity. Therefore, good intentions are never good enough. Understanding how the framework works is like learning horse riding on YouTube. We may pick up a few tricks, but it is only when we actually sit on that horse, feel the rhythm with the animal and actually try to stay on when it gallops that we begin the learning. In the same way is a conversation. Our internal inertia and olden ways will try to resist, and the alignment of all elements inside a conversation may get difficult when emotions rise or when the stakes are high. The important thing to remember is to practise. Learning the framework may take a few interventions, but to live it and its mastery requires a lifetime

A single conversation may not collectively create a positive workplace; however, any one conversation can create such a workplace too.

In Part 2, we look in detail about the anatomy of the VITAL framework and in Part 3, we use them to solve the four most pressing issues in team conversation.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team) • Look at the conversations you want to explore. What conversations did you concentrate on in the talk kaleidoscope? •

What are one or two ways in which you would like your talk to change?

• What kind of commitment are you ready to show towards your conversations? •

•

How will you know that you have achieved your desired talk action? What kind of support do you hope to get from the VITAL framework?

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us (New York, NY: Harmony, 2011, repr.). 2. J. L. Martin, ‘The Birth of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful: Toward an Investigation of the Structures of Social Thought’, in Reconstructing Social Theory, History and Practice (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Vol. 35, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016), 3–56. 3. William Isaacs, Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together (Currency, 1999). 4. Simon Sinek, ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’, 2009, https:// www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action 5. Carlos Casteneda, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8405362in-the-universe-there-is-an-un-measurable-indescribable-forcewhich 6. In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment that illustrates a paradox of quantum superposition. 104

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PART 2 VITAL: THE TALK–ACTION FRAMEWORK

CHAPTER 6

VISUALIZE

On the night of creation, I was awake Busy at work while everyone slept I was there to see the first wink and hear the first tale told… How can I describe this to you? You were born later.

Rumi

What would you advise a group of high-performing, talented and hardworking individuals, maybe the top 1 per cent of the world? In her speech at the Harvard Commencement Address, famous author J. K. Rowling1 extols the critical importance of imagination. In her words, Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

In a world that widely asserts itself to living in the present and holding on to the grounded reality of the present when influenced and distracted by all the noise around us, in finding the spiritual strength and peace by concentrating on the now rather than worrying about the then, the role of imagination gets diminished.

As far as it is known, no other species is able to envision something that does not exist. Humans, in contrast, are not only able to transcend the present but also compelled to do so. Our minds shift smoothly between past, present and future almost without our being aware of it.

Merlin Donald,2 a Canadian psychologist, neuro-anthropologist and cognitive neuroscientist, is noted for the position that evolutionary processes need to be considered in determining how the mind deals with symbolic information and language. Donald claims that the appearance of a ‘self-triggered recall and rehearsal loop’, that is, the ability to string thoughts together to form a ‘stream of thought’, enabled us to relive events that happened previously and bring them to life for each other, initially just through mime, but eventually through the spoken word as well. It enabled us to rehearse and refine actions and ideas, modifying them progressively, one step at a time. In a talk between people, imagination could delve both into our past to understand situations better and to the future in visualizing conversations and trying to come out with an option that is futurelooking and positive.

VISUALIZATION: FROM IMAGINATION TO REALITY In her book Creative Visualization, author Shakti Gawain3 writes, ‘Creative visualisation is the technique of using your imagination to create what you want in your life. Visualization then becomes a consistent way to harness the natural power of imagination. It’s a cognitive process that consists of forming vivid mental images’.

From playing pretend as a child to daydreaming in our later years, some form of visualization has always been a part of our lives. This is magic but based deeply in science. 108

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VISUALIZATION IN A CONVERSATION A conversation by default is an ineffective one, while a conversation spoken with a conscious design becomes effective. Let us explore how creative visualization works in a conversation. Visualization helps in all three dimensions of a talk: intention, dialogue and action.

Intention The first benefit of visualization is that we get to identify and set our true intentions as we visualize the conversation. Imagining the conversation actually taking place with the intended audience, we can think about the following: • •

What is the purpose of this conversation? What outcome am I looking for?

Without this step, entering into a conversation can either lead the actual talk to a meaningless journey or pull us into a whirlpool of unintended emotions. With visualization, it is possible for us to look into a future that we are only vague about and can now get a clear vision of where we want to go. In essence, visualization is a wholly, intention-inducing step.

Not only our intentions but our emotions also play a very important role. In spite of wanting to solve a problem and to stay away from emotions, in a heated conversation our emotions creep in. Visualization helps us to identify them, therefore making isolating, limiting beliefs and emotions easier. So consciously imagining what we want in our conversations helps us manifest them in reality.

Dialogue Visualization helps run the conversation in a controlled and cognitive manner in our minds first. This gives us the time to gather Visualize

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our thoughts, embrace the true emotions we have and even write a rough draft of the script.

The next time you have a presentation where you need to influence your ideas or speak with a colleague on something important, visualizing what you are going to say will go in the actual dialogue. Listening to yourself speak in your visualization will help refine your script. Especially in situations of importance, visualizing the conversation will also help understand the audience, therefore making the conversation a truly collective effort.

Action Many times, only after we sit in the talks do we realize newer emotions, a lack of clarity in roles and processes, etc. Once we visualize the conversation, these elements of designing the action steps can be easily navigated.

Thought is quick and easy, but it forms the blueprint for our action. Every action is first created as an idea in our minds. Form always follows ideas. The process of visualization is not merely a rough mental pre-run into a conversation.

It is the exploring and experiencing of our deepest thoughts, becoming aware of what’s holding a conversation from being generative, understanding the audience’s viewpoint and achieving intended action through our talk. There are two techniques to get the best out of a talk visualization process. One helps to explore possibilities in situations where the path ahead is unclear, long or complex. The other helps uncover the perceptions and thoughts of others in conversations that require us to understand others more. 110

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THE CONVERSATION MAP How will you know your talk has led to its intended action? And how will you know you are steering your conversation towards this action?

Visualizing a conversation map helps navigate such talks towards action. As can be understood, a conversation map is a series of steps created to navigate your talk.

Step 1: Envision Outcomes before You Talk Like Stephen Covey4 writes in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the first step is always to have the end in mind. Envision the desired outcome of your talk. •

•

What is your goal or aspiration for this conversation? This is your desired talk outcome.

Ensure that your outcome is future-looking and filled with possibilities. Also make sure that the outcome is positive for all. Before you go any further, test yourself:

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o  How ambitious is this outcome?

o  How difficult is it, and what are the probabilities of success? o  Note them down.

Step 2: Live Your Vision Imagine that you have successfully completed your conversation. Now visualize the following: •

What new action is taken as a result of your conversation?

•

Do you feel the positive energy bursting in your people because of the conversation? What are they thrilled about?

•

•

How are people different in their talk, behaviour or emotion?

How will this changed outcome change your life?

• What are the differences between the changed state and your present state? •

Therefore, what exactly is this conversation intended to do? What is the true purpose of this conversation?

For all the questions, write brief answers. Use the present tense while answering to ensure that your visualization exercise is fully realized. Be as specific as possible. Remember that it is not necessary that you write descriptive answers to the above questions. You can choose to use imagery as well.

Step 3: Current Position •

Where are you currently in your conversation journey?

•

Initiator: This is you. At this point, you have a clear idea of your intention and outcome. You also have a fair idea of your situation, issue or concern. At this stage, it is important

This step looks into the relationship between the three strategic elements in the conversation.

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to think about which parts of the current situation will be solved by talk alone. And more importantly how much of it will be discussed in this conversation.

2. Participant: They are the people you are having the conversation with. It can be one or many. At the Visualization stage it is important to know how much about the participants and their intentions do we know? 3. Agenda: The topic for discussion or the problem to be solved becomes the agenda. Having a wider idea about how the agenda is important to all the stakeholders in this conversation is an important step. This ensures we do not begin the talk with a myopic personal agenda.

In a way, this step sets the context for the conversation to occur.

Step 4: Next Steps •

Visualize the actual conversation.

• What will your words be? What possible responses would you get and how will you respond to them?

This volley of to-and-fro dialogue in visualization will pull out the hidden intentions, limiting beliefs and ineffective talk. Refine those scripts. Ask better questions. Stay with the context. Navigate and steer your talk towards your outcome.

Step 5: What Will Propel You? • •

What will help you in your conversation? Maybe you need better questions, maybe deeper listening. What support would you need from the audience?

• How can you ensure that your audience is receptive to propel you?

•

Reflect on these questions. While the map is important, it is not definitive. Feel free to meander. Visualize

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Step 6: What Will Stop You? The next step would be to think about the conversation derailers. Emotions, not having the trust in the process, not having authentic conversations and limiting beliefs are some of the conversation detailers. Identify what will stop you. An awareness of a conversation derailer will automatically help us focus on consciously avoiding it. This kind of a conversation map clearly helps to identify the major elements in the actual conversation and helps us in being better prepared.

CONVERSATIONS THAT WILL BENEFIT FROM THE CONVERSATION MAP Influential Conversations Influential conversations require leaders to influence and inspire their followers. The conversation map is their best first step in expanding awareness, inspiring them and showing your side of the story. In situations when a leader needs to share their vision also, this is a great first step.

Career Conversations Conversations about the individual aspirations of employees and teams require a conversation map. The job description and performance appraisal scores are not really a measure for what the individual wants and are not interactive. This makes the conversation map a great visualizing tool for both the initiator and the participant.

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THE TALK REFRAME One of the reasons that we have seen in the misalignment of the talk–action spectrum is negative framing (Chapter 3). This misalignment is found more profound in conversations that hold a greater emotional value or ones where there is an attitude or thought asymmetry. In such conversations, reframing technique in visualization would help move the intention towards positive.

Reframing refer to changing the intention to a position of ‘where we want to go and the thoughts, behaviour and events we want more of ’. It changes the focus from the problem to the outcome. It can be used in many difficult conversations. A few examples are as follows. Raj is a brilliant, hardworking member of your team. He is also routinely late for most meetings. Let’s frame–reframe this conversation.

Frame: ‘We have a problem, Raj. Your routine of always being late has to change.’

Reframe: ‘You are an important contributor to our team’s success, Raj. When you arrive late, it affects the team both in not getting your valuable input and in its performance. What do you think? How can we resolve this?’

It is very important to note that reframing does not mean skirting around issues or being polite and avoiding confrontation. Reframing means shifting the focus from the person to the issue by intentionally inviting engagement. A quick warning here is that reframing should resolve the issue and not dilute or dissolve it. Allowing Raj to continue to be late because he is a hardworking person and we want to avoid negative conversations does not reframe. It kills the solution.

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CONVERSATIONS THAT WILL BENEFIT FROM THE TALK REFRAME Difficult Conversations The biggest reason why a conversation turns difficult is because of differing priorities and perceptions. When these differing perceptions collide, the friction in the conversation makes it difficult. Reframing shifts the focus from differences in perceptions to the outcome and how it affects. This step ensures that the conversation does not blame people but invites them towards an engaging talk. Reframing conversations to concentrate on the myriad similarities than the differences alone shifts the dynamics in the conversation. It shifts the context.

Connected Conversations The issue with connected conversations is differences in the importance of what makes conversations engaging. Reframing to the situation will help in empathizing with the audience and building trust; thereby, the conversations take a turn towards cohesiveness and move out of the silo mentality.

Visualization influences conversations. Visualize positive and future-looking intentions. Play around with the two techniques. Then continue to the next step—invite—as discussed in the next chapter.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team) Consider the current conversations in your life:

1. Do they conclude the way you envision they should?

2. Visualize one conversation using the conversation map technique. How does this affect your thinking and emotions about the conversation? 3. Think of a conflict you had and apply the talk reframe to approach the same conversation. What do you see now?

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. J. K. Rowling, ‘Text of J.K. Rowling’s Speech’, The Harvard Gazette, 2008, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/ text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/ 2. M. Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition (Harvard University Press, 1991). 3. Shakti Gawain, Creative Visualisation (New World Library, 2002). 4. Steven R Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Freepress, 2004).

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CHAPTER 7

INVITE CONTEXT

Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn’t mean a damn thing. Knowledge is informationin-context—connecting the dots.

Michael Ventura

Context in a conversation is the frame of reference which would help people in the conversation to set direction.

In most talks, a lot of importance is given to the content of the talk and not nearly enough to the context. Context, therefore, is the hidden gem that we need to intentionally invite. In the book The World Café,1 the authors Juanita Brown and David Isaacs relate context to the banks of a river which help channel the flow of meaning without controlling it. The two contextual banks in the river of conversations, therefore, are the purpose and the participants. They can look simple and common, but most difficulties in conversations occur when these contexts are not set and understood by all. Herbert Clark’s2 grounding theory is notably the most relevant argument to creating a common ground and setting context.

Grounding is essential to communication. Once we have formulated a message, we must do more than just send it off. We need to assure ourselves that it has been understood as we intended it to be. Otherwise, we have little assurance that the discourse we are taking part in will proceed in an orderly way.

The simplest invitation to a conversation often is ‘Can we talk?’ Often it is the invitation that makes us realize that something important needs to be said. However, ‘Can we talk?’ can also be a question, asking will you also participate in the conversation without sliding to silence or violence? Therefore, an invitation to conversations is an invite to both purpose and people.

INVITING PURPOSE Purpose is the dynamic why of the conversation. It clarifies not just the intention but also the expected outcomes. It is a powerful initial step towards the success of the talk–action spectrum.

An invitation to clarifying the purpose can follow a simple template. The purpose of the conversation is to ‘big why’ from the ‘current situation’ towards a ‘desired outcome’. A few examples of a purpose invite can be as follows:

• The purpose of the meeting is to budget plan for the next quarter looking into the developments currently towards a more profitable quarter ending. • The purpose of the meeting is to brainstorm ideas to improve that operational efficiency towards a cost-efficient process.

By inviting the elements of purpose, we ensure that the context is always kept positive and future-looking and leads to constructive talks.

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know the purpose of the conversation. This invite changes both the content and quality of the conversation.

INVITING PEOPLE The people element in a conversation context is both the initiator (self ) and the participants.

By inviting them both, we are also inviting their perceptions, desires, ideas and opinions. A clear distinction between the three elements now in a conversation—purpose, initiator and participant—is very important to transition to deeper dialogue. If we change the context, the narrative and emotion will shift.

WHAT HAPPENS IN ITS ABSENCE? In the absence of a clear and distinct invite to the elements, there may be confusions between the elements. For example, in a performance review, the three elements are the manager, team member and performance. By creating a distinctiveness between the team member and the performance, we ensure that the conversation is steered towards the outcome. If this distinction is unclear, the conversation will tend to merge the team member and the performance together. This is merging the facts and emotions in the conversation, leading to a blame game. One person cries, ‘I was trying to support you!’ The other retorts, ‘What do you mean? You were patronizing me!’ The importance of inviting context is also to ensure that perspectives and boundaries are understood. By simply creating a distinct context and inviting them all to the table, we can ensure that both the team member and the manager will now work together to address the performance. Such a performance conversation would expand in its scope to bring in collective learning, understanding of different issues and use of current learning in future applications and planning. Invite Context

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HOW TO INVITE? ‘Please attend the meeting to brainstorm ideas at 4 pm in conference room one.’ This is not an invitation, just the passing of an information. Coming from your manager, it can also be an instruction.

An invite is a request to participate. An invite shows that you care. An invite lies in the area that unites the ‘I’ with the ‘we’ and urges both to look at a larger purpose that calls out for your contribution. We invite by honouring individual contribution. If we were to go to someone’s house and they offered us something, they are offering a part of themselves, their emotions, efforts, culture and heart. Recognizing this contribution is the biggest way to invite more contribution. In a conversation, we invite by recognizing the voice of the participants, their relationship with the other two elements and their contribution. In the process, we try to understand them and expand the scope of the purpose. How might we help people evolve from thinking of themselves simply as participants to thinking of themselves as active contributors to something larger?

What interesting and practical approaches can we imagine that would invite and enable each person to contribute their best thinking? Three of the most powerful ways to invite contribution from the two elements of the context are as follows: 1. Asking generative questions 2. Listening with compassion

3. Narrative action through storytelling

Asking Generative Questions ‘The moment of questioning is also the moment of choice, which holds the greatest leverage for effective action and positive change,’ 122

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says Marilee Adams in her book Change Your Questions, Change Your Life.3

Asking generative questions is an invitation to adopt the curiosity intention. Authors Jacqueline M. Stavros and Cheri Torres4 in their book Conversations Worth Having describe generative questions as follows: •

They make room for diverse and different perspectives.

•

They stimulate creativity and innovation.

•

They surface new information and knowledge.

Therefore, generative questions focus on the ‘what ifs’ and stimulate compelling conversations for collective action.

Mahesh is worried about his teenage daughter’s safety when she wants to go out one late evening with friends. If he said no, Mahesh would have made a decision to his side of the problem without even inviting his daughter and her side of the problem to the conversation. He decided to invite them with generative questioning. Mahesh said, ‘Shreya, I know you really want to go out with your friends today but I am worried about your safety. What do you think we can do that gives me the peace of mind and you the fun evening?’

The question allows his daughter to know the true worries of her dad. This first lowers the judgements and individual barriers. Second, it paves way for a shared emotion. After a bit of reflection and a back and forth talk, they both decided that Mahesh would pick her up at a midway point till which time she was with her friends. Shreya also went on to suggest that she share all her friends’ phone numbers to ensure that her dad felt comfortable. The importance of invitation in a conversation cannot be overemphasized enough. Genuine questions, ones for which we do not have the answers yet, are open invitations to innovation. Remember Einstein’s theory of relativity resulted from his wondrous question: what would the universe look like if I were riding a beam of light? Invite Context

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Fran Peavey,5 a pioneer in the use of strategic questioning for social change, observes that the questions open the answers. For example, to clean up the Ganges river, a question like ‘Have you thought about cleaning the Ganges?’ can provide a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and no emotion. Changing the question to ‘What do you see when you look at the Ganges? What does it mean to you? How do you feel about cleaning the river?’ would elicit emotion and volunteers immediately.

How Is Questioning an Invitation? Curiosity opens our minds and captivates our imagination. Questions when asked the right way—the generative questions— pave way to achieve immediate goals and sometimes give us lifetime of insight. To connect with someone truly, ask empathetic questions that will bring you closer to people. Such questions will help us understand the participant better, and this invitation as a question can be the foundation to a deeper conversation and a long-term relationship. In a team, when stakes are high and outcomes are still unclear, and the team is discussing strategies, be the leader and ask about the risks, choices and alternatives. Challenge their wisdom and force them to think. Your question is an invitation to collective wisdom.

Sometimes you can use your questions to craft a narrative in inspiration or accomplishment. Creative and visualizing questions like ‘A year from now, if you were to call me what will we be rejoicing?’ is a simple question but invites the participant to look into their future and their plans for it. Many times, when they do paint me a beautiful picture of the future, I ask, ‘So what are you doing about it now?’ It immediately focuses their attention and commitment. (We will see more about the importance of this magic question in Chapter 9.) The one place where we are itching to ask quick questions is situations where the other person is closed off to the talk and we 124

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want them to open up. And yet when we ask questions, it seems like an inquisition. In such times, particularly when questions look like a prod in your mind, some questions can open up, heal and ease the participant into the conversation. Questions that invite saying, ‘I am listening’ or ‘I am interested’ are the ones that invite in such situations. A simple ‘Tell me more’ can do wonders.

And then are the questions that help us diagnose, define and understand a problem so well that the solution automatically sits in front of us. Such is the power of diagnostic questioning. A simple line of questioning for a problem can be as follows: •

When did things start the downward slide?

•

What are our options?

• •

What have we learnt from this? What have we done till now?

In Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life,6 psychologist, mediator and teacher Marshall Rosenberg describes how he participated in a mediated conflict in the Middle East/West Asia which seemed completely intractable. When the parties met together for the first time, the leaders were furious, each accusing the other side of inciting violence. Through careful and sensitive questioning by the facilitators, they were able to establish that both sides genuinely sought safety and peace so that their children and future generations did not have to live in fear of murder or violence. Diana Whitney and David Cooperrider7 share hundreds of powerful questions in their book Encyclopaedia of Positive Questions, a true treasure trove.

Listening with Compassion Listening is the forgotten half of communication, the delicate hidden Cinderella among the more boisterous talk, body language and channels of communication. But there is no point of a conversation without someone to listen to. Invite Context

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Listening Is like Salt We remember the fairy tale of the salt princess. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear and a few other folk tales from India and Germany, the salt princess is a story about a king and his daughter. A king once asked his daughter how dear he was to her. ‘As dear, as dear—as salt!’ she said.

The king thought that this was very little, and he was very unhappy with his child’s answer. He banished her from the palace, and she went to the countryside to live as a shepherdess. As destiny sat silently on the king’s misfortunes, he met his daughter in her humble home. She served him a feast of just sweets and no salt. In a while, he understood the depth of her love.

Much like the salt in the story is the role of listening in conversations. We need it but don’t explicitly seek it like talking. All people want to be heard, feel respected and valued.

Levels of Listening Otto Scharmer8 describes four levels of listening in his book Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges: a simple and positive way to listen deeply.

The First of Otto Scharmer’s Four Levels of Listening: Downloading This first level is the skimming of information and instruction. We look at talk at face value and not really listening hard. Our minds are distracted; it is pseudo listening and this does not get the conversation far.

The Second of Otto Scharmer’s Four Levels of Listening: Factual Listening This level is the conversational listening. We’re focused, enquiring and paying attention to the content of the conversation. We listen 126

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objectively and notice differences in content and perspectives. This listening requires an open mind.

The Third of Otto Scharmer’s Four Levels of Listening: Empathic Listening Reaching the third level is to connect with the person we are speaking to, not just the facts they bring. ‘Empathetic’ as the name suggests means stepping into the other person’s shoes and listening from outside our boxes and boundaries to open our hearts to the conversation

This gives greater clarity over the situation. In this space of safety, we can see increase in sharing and increasing insight and confidence to try new things.

The Fourth of Otto Scharmer’s Four Levels of Listening: Generative Listening This is where Otto goes further than many levels of listening, and in his words, I can’t express what I experience in words. My whole being has slowed down. I feel quieter and more present and more my real self—you know you have been operating out of this fourth level when, at the end of the conversation you realise you are no longer the same person you were when you started the conversation.

At what level we choose to listen decides how much we invite people and purpose in the conversation.

Listening as an Invitation Within a conversation, you invite the participant, their story, their perspective, their emotions and even their unconscious possibilities that they are not seeing currently. Invite Context

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On the surface level, you listen to their content. However, learning to attune yourself to a deeper frequency to listen for insight helps sense the unsaid. Consider the following points as you develop listening as an invitation skill.

1. Consciously plan to listen: Until listening comes as a natural skill, make it a planned goal. Before you begin a conversation, ask yourself: How deep do you plan to listen? What level do you want the conversation to go? Then notice your listening. Observe if you listen to facts and story or the emotion or if you are truly connecting with the other person.

2. Listen while you talk: Most people consider listening as a concept only when others are talking, but in a conversation, the space held by you while you are talking is also important. Observe and listen to what you are talking as well. Is it matching the purpose of the conversation? Are the dialogues positive and inquiry based? If you find yourself talking too much, take a breather and start listening. •



Moments of listening in action: In the mid of a fast-paced conversation or any talk where you feel you could get carried away, use this exercise in listening. It is a real-time reflective process. Stop for a moment or slow down the speed of your conversation and ask yourself: ο What is happening? (I am getting emotional.)

ο What am I doing? (I am losing interest in the group. I am bringing defensive response in the group.)

ο What am I saying? (I am confronting and judging in my talk and not working on my original intention.)

ο What can I do now? (Open up my curiosity battery and plug in a bit of open-mindedness and listen.)

This way of listening to what you are talking while you are talking will increase your awareness of the whole conversation. 128

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3. Reflectively listen: It is a simple two-step process. First, the listener opens up to hear and, second, the listener repeats the message back to the speaker to confirm that it was understood accurately. It’s important to repeat the message clearly without distorting it. It also helps to pay attention to the emotional tone and to include that. ‘Just so I understand’ are four words that can serve you well.

Narrative Action through Storytelling A conversation is the natural habitat of the narrative, and stories are a common part of conversations. We tell stories to invite others into our worlds, to influence from our perspective, to open our hearts in inclusion and to engage and build trust.

While it is called ‘storytelling’, the stories themselves are interactive productions. A story about yourself enables others to understand you, and a story about your ideas allows others to see what you stand for and where you hope to lead.

How many times have we attended a presentation or a meeting or speech and, within the first 30 seconds, thought, ‘Wow, that’s what I wanted to listen’? They hooked the audience in 30 seconds. There are not many in our experience. That is because the speaker did not invite us to the conversation. He did not tell his story. Without Di Caprio and Kate Winslet, Titanic will be just a statistic of a sunk ship in the books of history.

Stories therefore allow us to talk about our values, ideas and thinking as a lived experience rather than abstract principles. In his bestselling book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, Robert McKee9 argues that stories ‘fulfil a profound human need to grasp the patterns of living—not merely as an intellectual exercise, but within a very personal, emotional experience’. McKee believes that executives can engage listeners Invite Context

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on a whole new level if they toss their PowerPoint slides and learn to tell good stories instead. Stories are constructed to accomplish particular actions in both everyday and institutional settings. Stories have been told for centuries, yet it is an art to master the skills of good storytelling and to lead the process with impactful and truthful conversations.

Stories are layered, alchemical narratives which are deeply enmeshed in our cognitive and social fabrics. It is the most powerful invitation to a conversation, as a story is inseparable from the context in which it is performed, lived and told. Externally, stories are the currency of the social construction of reality. The stories we hear and tell are central to how we make our sense of self socially and how we make social institutions: family, workplace, culture and society. Internally, our conscious sense of self can be viewed as a continuous act of narration by the mind, as it tries to create meaning out of experience. Stories in a conversation play a three-tiered role.

The ‘first tier’ introduces the situation, narrator, antagonist, protagonist and setting. When we listen to Steve Jobs, we can hear these elements beautifully, as he brings to life the present situation (the story setting) with all its problems (the antagonist) and then cues in the Apple product as the protagonist, the hero ready to vanquish all issues. This tier builds the rapport and engagement, invites the audience and draws them into the story.

The ‘second’ tier is the story itself: the descriptions, motivations, problems and opportunities. This tier adds value to the first tier and allows for deeper understanding and bridges the gap between the narrator and the audience in their emotional connect. Customers value a trusted advisor versus a vendor trying to sell the product. That is the reason why online reviews are rated so high. Lived experiences and stories bring transparency and therefore build trust. The ‘third tier’ is the field of the shift—the reason why the story is being told. The outcomes in the story should now make the 130

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audience emote or engage in action or convince them of the idea. This is the place where the invitation to deeper participation in a conversation is complete. In an conversation with buyers, clients or other stakeholders, where your purpose is to influence, when you’re telling stories, buyers are imagining the possibilities and building desire as they see themselves having the successes. This invitation can also be to the participant. Asking a generative question invoking a story from the participant can also be an invitation. For example, ‘What made you choose to be a doctor?’ is an invite to share the story about personal motivation and desire for future.

When people tell us something, we tend to see it as representative of some underlying truth. That’s because storytelling invites conversation, captivates attention, inspires the imagination and captures hearts. It is the oldest form of communication, after all. The power of good storytelling is unrivalled, and the moral of the story I’m about to tell explains it all.

This story comes from a fascinating book Digital Aboriginal: The Direction of Business Now—Instinctive, Nomadic, and Everchanging10 which brings together an anthropological respect for indigenous wisdom with a post-modern awareness of the digital life. Aborigine trackers are the best in the world, able to follow a man even years after he has walked through a dry desert terrain. An anthropologist asked one of these expert trackers how he did it. The tracker responded, ‘Oh, it’s easy. We walk with him.’ He does not look for clues; he enters the time and space where the journey occurred. He knows how to walk in the same world as the event he seeks.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team)

• In the next conversations that you may have today or this week, visualize how you plan to invite people and purpose. •

• •

What techniques are you using to keep the person separate from the problem?

Try listening at a deeper level. What kind of invitation did deep listening convey in your talk?

Script your story. Share your narrative. Be ready to influence and be influenced.

NOTES AND REFERENCES   1. Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005).   2. Hebert Clark, Using Language (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

 3. Marilee Adams, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life (Read HowYouWant.com, 2010).   4. Jacqueline M. Stavros and Cheri Torres, Conversations Worth Having (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018).

 5. Fran Peavey, in Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter (BerrettKoehler Publishers, 2005).

  6. Marshal Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (PuddleDancer Press, 2015).

 7. Diana Whitney and David Cooperrider, Encyclopedia of Positive Questions (Crown Custom Publishing, 2014).  8. Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2016).   9. Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (Harper-Collins, 1997).

10. M. Tarlow and P. Tarlow, Digital Aboriginal: The Direction of Business Now—Instinctive, Nomadic, and Ever-changing (Warner Books, 2002). Invite Context

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CHAPTER 8 TRANSFORM TO A CONVERSATION CHRYSALIS

Speak to the animal in us And the animal will answer. Speak to the human in us And a voice in song will rise.

Alberto Rios

To transform to a conversation chrysalis is a responsibility—the responsibility to orient yourself to be truly present and participate wholly in the conversation. It is the responsibility to invite another to engage safely without fear. It is the responsibility to bring possibilities, change and transformation during the conversation. Imagine the following: • •

Your talk is building high levels of trust.

You all feel safe to talk your ideas, however big or small.

• You support each other and all judgements are suspended within this space.

WHAT DOES THE SPACE OF CONVERSATION MEAN? One of the definitions of ‘space’ in the Oxford Dictionary1 is ‘the freedom to live, think and develop in a way that suits one’.

Space in the conversational context can be described as the safe and free emotional space you create in your talk for yourself and your audience to think, develop and transform. At the subconscious level, if everyone in the conversation space is able to experience this space, then the entire conversation transcends to a much deeper level. A deeper conversation is one where people in the conversation space are able to • •

Say what they would like to

Feel all and any emotion and are comfortable in it

• Feel safe to share their wildest hopes, deepest desires and most paralysing fear and anxieties •

Listen to other’s share the same without judging

Transitioning to such a conversation space requires us to let go of our control, embrace change and honour differences. Otto Scharmer2 describes it thus in his work Leading from the Emerging Future: Holding the space is a capacity that requires us to not move in too much, micromanage, impose our own will and so on, but also not too little. It’s not about disappearing. It’s not about over imposing. But it’s being there, being with, staying with, and holding this space for something that is wanting to happen and to arrive at its own schedule. So, to do that in complex group processes and change processes, it requires us to pay attention to the physical space, to the digital space, to the social environment.

WHAT DOES THE SPACE OF CONVERSATION LOOK LIKE? The most common and exquisite example to the process of transformation is the journey of the caterpillar to the butterfly—one natural process that we can learn a great deal from. Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis

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How does the slow, green worm metamorphose into the bright, colourful butterfly? It is by forming a soft, sacred space called the chrysalis. Inside this chrysalis, the caterpillar totally disintegrates into a mass of imaginal cells. From this jelly-like mass emerges a completely new and beautiful butterfly. To the caterpillar, its transformation is a process of death and then emergence of a remarkable butterfly.

In our conversations, imagine our outcomes to be the beautiful butterfly.That makes the current state at the time of the conversation the caterpillar. And the entire process of the conversation becomes the chrysalis.

Inside the space of the conversation chrysalis, it becomes safe and free for the people to brainstorm, disintegrate their thoughts into imaginal cells and allow for the transformed ideas to emerge. The individual ideas and ego-protecting behaviours are stripped away, and a new sense of collective self emerges in these spaces. In the words of Judith Glaser,3 the author of Conversational Intelligence, ‘To get to the next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of relationships, which depends on the quality of conversations. Everything happens through conversation.’

THE CONVERSATION CHRYSALIS It is not possible to create a conversation chrysalis by using steps, tips and techniques. The conversation chrysalis is an emotional experience and needs to be experienced by all in the conversation. The conversation cannot be a neat line drawn from A to B, but more like the doodles and scribbles of a two-year-old with crayons. Allowing the space for this chaotic process is what makes the transformation possible. The chrysalis is an evolutionary process—very difficult and mechanical to achieve on a Petri dish but easily visible in the dance of life. 136

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Throughout the evolution of humankind, it can be seen that an experience is difficult to perform in the short term but becomes beautiful when it turns into an art form.

Considering the conversation chrysalis to be an art form gives us the patience and capacity to assimilate the technique. Art is a potent catalyst for a deeper inquiry which leads to the emotional truth about a situation. Look at the emotions in a song or a painting. Art creates a bonding experience and plays an important role in helping us find our authentic voice, nurturing relationships between dissimilar groups and fostering pluralistic points of view.

SPACE OF THE CONVERSATION DANCE Conversation to me is a dance. Some steps forward, a few steps back, twirl on your perception and follow the rhythm. In dance, like a conversation, it is not the structure but the focus that matters. ‘Focus is the quintessential component of performance in every activity,’ said Tim Gallwey,4 the bestselling author of The Inner Game of Work. Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis

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The dramatic similarity between conversations and dance is extraordinarily compelling. Four most compelling similarities and therefore their corresponding focus in a conversation chrysalis are explained below.

Dance Takes Place at the Moment: Focus on the Conversation Moment Unlike painting or writing, where rework, edits and preservation are part of the art, dance can be practised but performed only in that moment, exactly like conversations. What happens inside the conversation chrysalis is the actual talk—the performance. This cannot be edited from past or preserved for the future.

Inside the conversation chrysalis, there must be the connection, a shared experience, a shared emotion. Such a shared connection can only happen when the people inside the conversation chrysalis focus on the moment—the actual conversation—and do not bring their past opinions, biases or other problems into the conversation. ‘The world you see is a function of the observer you are’. So the questions here are: ‘What observer are you?’ and ‘What are you looking for?’ Holding the sacred space and focusing on the moment are important. Dance and talk are both momentary, yet filled with meaning. It is these ephemeral moments in the conversation chrysalis that can create the connection and therefore propel collective insight. Such a deep conversation is not easy and draws on some innate strengths and discipline. •

The discipline to listen completely

•

The discipline to stick to the common purpose

•

The strength to keep judgement at bay, the strength to speak authentically

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Dance Works to an Underlying Rhythm: Focus on the Conversation Rhythm Rhythm is at the core of dance and our conversations. The beat of our heart, the click of our keyboards, the pace of our talk and the frequency of our emotions are all rhythmic. Success inside the conversation chrysalis is in recognizing and engaging the rhythms of our interaction. A key element in building rapport and trust in conversations is to look at the rhythm.

Dance educator and anthropologist John Wilson5 of the University of Arizona has said, ‘Rhythm is not that clock on the wall. Rhythm is always an experienced phenomenon.’ Look at the rhythmic patterns in the talking, see beneath the surface and look for the intentions of others in the chrysalis. Our own personal rhythms interact with those of others and vice versa. This forms the rhythm of the conversation chrysalis. This beat then provides the energy in the group.

Look at the body language, tone, pace and language in the conversation chrysalis. The cadence in our conversations occur when our rhythms match. Lab studies have demonstrated that two people, when in sync with their conversation, begin to mirror one another’s rhythms. Imagine a conversation chrysalis of the senior leadership team in a genetic engineering company: the academic background, molecular biology data-driven scientists from R&D, market-driven sales and marketing and numbers-driven finance team. The pace of talk for the scientists may be in a different rhythm to the sales and marketing people and can be totally different from the finance guys. Sometimes when their rhythms do not sync, there is a rhythmic difference. Just as we would use the word ‘dissonance’ to refer to conflicting sounds, we will use the word ‘dysrhythmia’ to refer to situations in which rhythms are in conflict. Misunderstandings occur when intention and action are judged, by different participants, on different rhythm scales. An African tribe came together Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis

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each year for their annual ceremony and celebration. As the different families and groups started to gather, they would dance to their different rhythms. But at one point, all would hit the first beat of their rhythm at the same time. That became the starting point for the group’s activity, ‘beat one’. In your chrysalis, find your ‘beat one’. Find the common thread, the things that ring the same for all in the group. Keep those beats the core and allow the different rhythms to develop in the group. This would create both harmony to the common things and freedom to think differently in others.

The Beauty of the Dance Lies in the Dancer: Focus on the People Although a skill, it is the grace of the dancer that creates the dance. Look at any great dancer perform, and you will see how they capture the audience attention, connect with them emotionally and even draw them into their world of dance. There is a very strong ascendancy of emotional power, and we find ourselves caught up in feelings and emotions we may not have even realized we had.

In Bharatnatyam, abhinaya plays an important part. Natyashastra6 says that abhinaya is the art of ‘exhibiting the meaning of what one depicts’. The dancer therefore has to evoke the emotion in their audience through their movements. Abhinaya Darpanam of Nandikeshvara says:

Yatho Hastato Dhrishtihi Yatho Dhrishtisto Manaha Yatho Manatato Bhavaha Yatho Bhavastato Rasaha It means:

Where the hands go, the eyes should follow Where the eyes go, the mind should follow Where the mind goes, the emotions are generated Where the emotions are generated, sentiment arises. 140

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The role of all people involved inside the conversation chrysalis is to connect, not to debate their point, persuade or look around in stony silence. It is to connect, to speak their side and share their insight and also to listen to others and to allow the flow of energy to take the talk towards productive action. And we can do this in three ways. Sheila, a senior executive, brings her top management team together after a particularly trying time for her personally, and for the business. In the meeting, she speaks from the heart, not the head, about what the organization and her managers mean to her. She speaks about not just the numbers, struggles and work but also the late-night stories and sacrifices of personal lives for the last few weeks. She demonstrates that she had listened and noticed their effort and commitment. She made her team feel seen. She connected with them.

She spoke of the personal struggles she had during the time. She made herself become a part of the team and ensured that the hierarchy was kept out of the chrysalis. She spoke evocatively in a language that would connect her to her team.

And the last point, her body language mirrored her words. Her abhinaya followed her words and her thought, and this brought out the emotion in her audience. After she finished, an overwhelming sense of caring and concern filled the room.

Dance Is Movement: Focus on the Dynamic and Allow for Failure According to Roger Martin,7 the third strongest human urge, after survival and procreation, is the urge to succeed. He writes about how people play only those games that they can succeed at, thereby not risking their life and liberty. Inside the conversation chrysalis, staying on the safe ground of passable success should be discouraged. Instead, there should be space for failure. There should be space for new learning and new insights which only a Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis

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few failed attempts can provide. This is true expansion of thought and performance. Action steps continued from this space will have more authenticity.

Transitioning to the space of the conversation dance is a complex skill. And like any other complex learning, it takes time and practice. You cannot hold the conversation chrysalis intellectually. It can only be practised through both mind and body—like a sadhana (realization through dedicated practice). Who is responsible for the conversation chrysalis? Is it the leader? Or the initiator of the conversation? Or the participant? It is not necessary for the leader or the follower or the initiator to be responsible. Neither is it the responsibility of the participant to hold this dance together.

Who then is responsible? The simple answer is ‘you’. It is your conversation, your responsibility. It is immaterial whether in any particular conversation you are the leader, follower, initiator or participant. You have learnt how to transition to this space of the conversation dance—the responsibility of the chrysalis is yours.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team)

1. Look at the conversations that you are having in your life. What kind of conversation chrysalis do you create for your conversations? 2. What kind of chrysalis do you wish you have for the conversations you have?

3. What is missing? Look at the focus points in the conversation chrysalis and reflect on the missing focus points in your conversations. 4. Imagine if you used them, how will your conversations change?

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Defnition of Space. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ definition/american_english/space_1 2. Otto Scharmer, Leading from the Emerging Future (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013). 3. Judith Glaser, Conversational Intelligence (Bibliomotion, 2014). 4. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Work (Random House, 1999). 5. John Wilson, Professor Emeritus, Department of Dance, University of Arizona. His quote is from Robert B. Denhardt and Janet V. Denhardt, The Dance of Leadership (M. E. Sharpe, 2006). 6. Natyashastra, in full Bharata Natyashastra, also called Natyasastra, is a detailed treatise and handbook on dramatic art which deals with all aspects of classical Sanskrit theatre. It is believed to have been written by the mythic Brahman sage and priest Bharata (1st century bce–3rd century ce). 7. Roger Martin, Are You Confusing Strategy with Planning? Harvard Business Review, 2 May 2014. https://hbr.org/2014/05/are-youconfusing-strategy-with-planning 144

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CHAPTER 9

ACTION DESIGN

The Prussian General Staff, under the elder von Moltke … did not expect a plan of operations to survive beyond the first contact with the enemy. They set only the broadest of objectives and emphasized seizing unforeseen opportunities as they arose…. Strategy was not a lengthy action plan. It was the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances.

Jack Welch, 1981

The audience were captivated. They listened enthralled to the engaging, humorous and deeply convincing message of their CEO. He spoke about technological change, creating newer products and ushering in changes to the people and customers. He spoke from the heart, without a paper, passionately in a deep mesmerizing voice. He urged his people to act, get on and do it. The future was theirs. Amid the thunderous applause in the room, a small thought crept in the heads of many in the audience. They silenced it, ignored it but the thought lingered like an itch. ‘So what does he want me to do exactly?’

This question is precisely the point where generally talks stop and therefore no action occurs. How many times in meetings do we understand the strategy, agree with the tactics and yet have the question: ‘So what do you want me to do exactly?’

This is the reality. Meetings proliferate and decisions are delayed. There is a lot to do, but what will have the greatest effect and who should do it? Accountability becomes more diffuse, so controls proliferate. This now restricts the engagement. It is a toxic and vicious cycle which prevents the talk to get to action. In the words of Bob Dunham, the founder of the Institute for Generative Leadership, ‘To act is to make something happen. Yet our interpretation of what is action can be blind to powerful acts. Action happens first in language with acts of language. It shapes every other kind of action we take as a consequence.’

The entire book is a claim that all actions come from conversations. Actions occur first in our conversations and then shape other kinds of actions. Therefore, when required actions do not occur, it is possible that a few elements of conversation have not taken place or have been ineffective. And they happen all around us. From a simple request to email details to strategic action planning, all are conversations. Moving from the path of our current state to a desired state in our teams, family and community is a talk–action path. A conversation first visualized by the initiator, then invited with expanding awareness leading to the space of the conversation chrysalis, now requires a quick closing of all action points. That being so, an action is a converging talk. Navigating the talk for an action should enable results towards the end.

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2. The invitation to participants to come together to look at the situation and contribute

3. Creating a conversation chrysalis to have a deep conversation about the topic

In the last section, we look at clarifying the outcomes of the conversation chrysalis into action. And it is here that we meet the true gaps between the talk and action and learn how to fix them. We make plans, map goals, invite and talk through the issues and run the whole conversation in a linear sequence, trusting its reliability. The flow of conversations has the following gaps. 1. The gap between the why and the how: A deep conversation between all members of a senior leadership team can lead to multiple ideas and strategies. It can be transformative, but walking out of the conversation chrysalis without the clarity on how this giant idea will work in everyday life and breaking it down into simple actionable points is the first gap between purpose and process.

2. The gap between the what and who: What should be done is a conversation dopamine. Most meetings love to spend a lot of time on the what—hashing out ideas, planning the project and dissecting an issue till all the blood runs out. The gap is in not closing the plan with roles and individual actions with accountability. The gap is in not understanding individual aspirations and then creating roles and later having accountability. 3. The gap between time and resource: Given enough time, a lot of activities somehow get done. The idea is to complete the action within a deadline. When there is a deadline, it affects the availability of resources. The flow of action design rests on four clarity points. • •

Timeline clarity: When do we want to accomplish it? Role clarity: Who is involved?

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• •

Process clarity: How will it get done?

Resource clarity: Where will the resources come from?

TIMELINE CLARITY Every future-specific abstract idea gets a goal clarity when the timelines are clear. A deadline immediately adds certainty, creates a sense of urgency and doubles up on commitment. A request without a timeline is a wish.

It is shocking to see how many conversations end without deadlines to deliverables, especially if the conversation deals with new ideas, engaging behaviour or exploring new opportunities. Some talks have a simple ‘when’: •

•

Let’s catch up tomorrow for lunch at 1 pm. We can review our progress on Monday.

• By this time next year, we will have our new product market-ready.

Conversations without timelines for fulfilment will lead to overcommitment or vague promises, which can eventually lead to failures and disappointments. Even very basic conversations without the clarity of ‘when’ turn disturbing. For example: Ash:

I want that report completed.

Trish: Okay.

And now Trish is worried. Did Ash mean by today? This week? In the next hour? Suddenly, with the lack of clarity of a timeline, this message becomes confusing and makes Ash a lot more controlling than intended. A simple solution could have been to ask: ‘By when?’ The missing conversation creates ripples in their engagement now. In many teams, lateness is a recurring problem. Often being late, not completing a work on time and delays in process are attributed 148

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to process or personal inefficiencies and laziness. It can very easily be an issue with not having a clear conversation specifying timelines. If people do not know when something is due, it also reduces the effectiveness of their talk with others. Some people believe that a timeline in every conversation is stressful and therefore should be used only in talks like planning or scheduling conversations. That is not true. The ‘when’ is the part which will move the needle towards action. Even in a friendly chat about catching up with friends, without a ‘when’, it becomes whenever. And the group chat keeps bringing up the ‘We have to meet’ tag every few months like clockwork for a few years and slowly the group thinks that no one is interested in meeting. Put in a timeline: ‘Let’s meet this weekend.’ Immediately, there will be more engagement in the group. A few would have prior engagements; some may not be in town. So the conversation would continue till a favourable date is reached and an action would happen. A bit of a warning here: The importance of timelines cannot be overemphasized and, by that sense, its importance requires us to be authentic. No false deadlines, please. A talk with false timelines shows a lack of trust, and this does not go well in building engaged teams in the long run.

ROLE CLARITY This refers to the people—the individuals and groups who are directly involved in the action. They can be the decision-makers, actual hands and legs of the action, resource providers, support providers or even the people who will authorize, regulate and cheerlead the conversation you are having.

The clarity of roles is layered, and the first one rests on who makes the decisions. Everyone can say, ‘We poured our ideas inside that conversation chrysalis. Now someone else work it out.’ Action Design

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The conversation on its own cannot be action, and that is the first decision to be made.

Ideation, brainstorming, shared meaning and harvesting collective insights are all done in the divergent think tank of the conversation chrysalis. And then this needs to be untangled into individual threads of an activity, which then needs to be handed to people. Having a clarity on who will decide and how paves way to action. Role clarity needs to be cleared before the invite steps itself, so that the talk includes all people. Examples of managers who did not bring a few key personnel to the initial meetings and later had problems in engagement in later stages of the project are not uncommon.

When in doubt about whom to include, err on the side of inclusion.

Including people will also ensure that they are aligned with what is expected out of them and how their task impacts the overall scheme of things. This step brings understanding and commitment in teams. When someone then raises their hand for an ‘I will do it,’ the action is now aligned with accountability. Another question in the role clarity: Do you really have to ask people to do things? Can’t people see for themselves what needs to be done? Don’t they understand what their jobs are?

Yes, you have to ask and, no, job description is not enough to provide role clarity in every conversation. Individuals can see the action they could take, but unless specified and agreed upon, it is difficult to maintain any accountability for the process. A lack of role clarity will affect the process and therefore ultimately the results. Almost every activity in a team gets done because a request is made and a promise is kept. Once the role decisions are made, do not engage in post-decision lobbying. This dilutes the decision-making, and the action will be in the long loop of ping-pong talks. 150

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PROCESS CLARITY The ‘how’ part of any conversation is as important as the ‘why’. Sketching your ideas, thoughts and all the plans into doable chunks and having a clear plan of action should be part of the conversation.

The thoroughness of the plan depends on the size and complexity of the job at hand and the level of experience of the team members. The process is not just in conversations that have tangible outcomes. What will be the process clarity in a conversation between two colleagues who compete with each other and do not see eye to eye? Once they find the common points in the actual talk, process clarity will help them chart out how they can be aware of their behaviour and what to do to ensure that friction in their conversations is reduced.

RESOURCE CLARITY A conversation moves from idea to implementation and needs to have clarity on resources. Do we have the required resources? Where do they come from? Who will source them? What is the support required? Thinking about resources and where they will come from automatically creates more confidence, and the probability of action increases.

It is easy to think of resource clarity in conversations where the group is planning an event. The entire talk will be on resources.

In case the team is deciding on digital advertisement, the talk on the resource clarity is easy. Think of conversations which are emotional in nature. Let us consider an example.

Laya has been trying to speak with Dhruv for quite some time now. Every time she calls, he confirms to meet the next day or Action Design

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later in the week, but the meeting keeps getting postponed. When she finally fixes the meeting, Dhruv promises the deliverables but delays again. The issue is that Laya thinks that Dhruv is the resource, and Dhruv is not clear about his role. In the conversation, if the clarity about Laya’s resource—Dhruv—was made succinctly, he would have had the role clarity as well.

As we see, when it is humans in the innovation age, we are the resource, the decision-makers, the role players and the leaders. Our conversations need to address these myriad facets clearly.

AN ACTION-BASED TALK The action part of the talk has three steps.

1. Identify goals and action steps which close the gaps in talk action. 2. Integrate commitment and accountability into the process. 3. Establish support systems.

Identify Goals and Action Steps The first place right out of a conversation chrysalis will be to set goals, the next steps, in such a way that it closes the three gaps in action. All conversations may not lead to concrete actions. But this step is important even in a simple chat or small talk. In conversations, action is not project management but people connection.

Some conversations inspire—the action steps in such talks are the ‘digestion’ of the conversation itself. Some conversations influence and change our way of thinking—the action step here is the new learning. And a few conversations simply connect—the action step here is the relationship.

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what was visualized in the first step. It is not about jumping to problem-solving and taking immediate action always. An action may include further thinking, newer feelings or perspective, task completion, self-inquiry, change in behaviour or viewpoint or decision, research or experimentation. Let us understand how goal setting works in a few conversations.

1. In a brainstorming session, the action planning begins with the exploration and convergence of next steps: ‘We need to start wrapping up. Based on our conversation so far, what are the three things we need to accomplish before we meet again? Who will be responsible for the tasks?’

2. In an emotional conversation with opposing views, the action planning begins with thinking about the other person’s perspective and exploring one’s emotions: ‘I understand that your perspective is vastly different from mine. I hear you and need time to assimilate. Let’s meet tomorrow again to discuss further’. This is the first action step in a difficult talk—getting to the common ground. As Herbert Clark says in his conversational grounding theory, ‘Our goal is to reach the grounding criterion: that we and our addressees mutually believe that they have understood what we meant well enough for current purposes.’

INTEGRATE COMMITMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY Identifying and setting goals and action steps are at the shallower information level. Most conversations achieve this step. Barriers to achieving the goal should be explored, along with potential support mechanisms for the action design.

Talking about barriers to achieving the goal integrates commitment and accountability. Let us consider a talk discussing the reasons a task could not be completed. A single question ‘What have we done about it?’ brings the magic to commitment and accountability to the conversation. From there on, it will become Action Design

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easier to explore the challenges in the action steps. If there is no significant answer to the magic question, then we know that the issue is commitment and accountability. Whatever the answer is, it allows the conversation to move to a much deeper level.

It is not limited to situations where actions are tangible. When it is emotions, perspectives or anything intangible, the magic question will still question their commitment and limiting thoughts that bind them. Let us not oversimplify commitment and accountability. The goal is set, people walk out of the meeting and later the action actually does not happen. When confronted you, may hear the following: •

‘What’s the big deal? Is it really that important?’

•

‘I tried my best, but people don’t support me at all.’

• • •

‘Chill man, I will get it done for you.’

‘I have more important things to do.’

‘I did not know I was specifically supposed to do it.’

All these point towards a single fact—I did not show commitment and accountability. Removing the barriers to achieving the goal is an important step here. If an action is difficult or tedious, does this constitute an ability problem or a commitment problem? In many cases, the barriers of commitment and ability are interlinked and ambiguous to analyse. Whatever the reason is, jointly explore the barriers and then provide support.

ESTABLISH SUPPORT TO HARNESS ENERGIZED ACTION The third part of the talk–action spectrum (Chapter 3) is to harvest energized action. In this space, teams are in the collaboration mode and show clear adaptive resilience and learning agility. In this space, establishing support systems to ensure that the dynamics are harnessed towards action is important. 154

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A few explorative questions which can help establish support are as follows: • •

What will help us make sure that the ball does not drop?

In what ways might we need to prepare ourselves for action in terms of skills, information, people, resources, connection, ideas or thoughts?

These action steps are well integrated with each other and are an outgrowth of the earlier steps in VITAL: visualize, invite and transition to conversation chrysalis.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team) 1. What are the action goals you can identify in yours and your team’s conversations? 2. What are you planning to do about it?

3. What kind of support and resources would you need to action your goals?

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CHAPTER 10

LEARNING IN REFLECTION

Learning is not simply having a new insight or a new idea. Learning occurs when we take effective action, when we detect and correct error. How do you know that you know something? When you can produce what it is you claim to know.

Chris Argyris

Can you think of a conversation which had a major impact on you? Pause for a moment and observe what happened in the conversation and what changed as a result.

Peter Senge explains in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook,1 ‘Once you are centered in the silence, expand your awareness to encompass the entire group. Replay the conversation in your mind. Hang the thoughts which you and others expressed out in front of your mind like flying kites. Try to pick out a pattern in the comments which illuminates where the dialogue ‘wanted to go’, as opposed to where it was going. The group’s intent is often different from the path the discussion was following, and upon reflection, you may be able to feel that intent pop out of your memory of the whole conversation. As you reflect, what thoughts come to you? How does this reflection change your thinking? Your learning?’

‘At its very simplest, learning in reflection is a continuous cycle of reflecting, and learning about the talk and action steps.’

Chris Argyris and Donald Schön2 aimed at exploring the reasoning and attitudes which underlie human action and producing more effective learning in organizations and other social systems. Their theory on action science has two major skills. They are reflection— slowing down our thinking processes to become more aware of how we form our mental models—and inquiry—holding conversations where we openly share views and develop knowledge about each other’s assumptions. TAR is based on both these principles and uses reflective inquiry.

THE TAR DOUBLE-LOOP LEARNING As can be seen from the TAR model, learning happens on two levels.

The first level is the reflection on the action itself. Did action occur? Was it the desired outcome? In case the action was not satisfactory, what are the next steps? The analysis of the problem alone is a problem-converting process. This leads to a dependency loop of acting on taking more action, talking on the action adding on to the existing confusion. The second level is the reflection on the conversations which led to the action.

Reflection on the conversation which leads to the action is a symptom-converting process. This second loop in learning is necessary to unveil the root causes and interactions which change intentions, contexts and engagement for any action.

This forms the double loop in reflection learning where we move beyond the action to the reason for the action as well. The distinction between single- and double-loop learning comes from the cybernetic theorist W. R. Ashby.3 Ashby used the example of a thermostat which turns heat on or off to keep the temperature Learning in Reflection

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near a set point. This is single-loop learning. When someone changes the setting, the system engages in double-loop learning. Chris Argyris and Donald Schön introduced this distinction to the domain of leadership and organizational learning. They defined double-loop learning as behavioural learning which changes the governing variables (values, norms and goals) of one’s theory in use, the theory of action which can be inferred from behaviour. This double-loop learning is critical to the success of the VITAL framework and its promise to turn talk to action. The TAR works on the principles of reflective inquiry.

It’s all very well looking back on an event and wishing that we had acted differently or saying, ‘If that happened again, I’d act differently.’ However, in reality, we are not given a second chance. We don’t get to edit our actions or conversations, and the impact stays a long time. A better option is to reflect on the event and understand and learn from experience. Hindsight is 20/20, but reflective inquiry would help in future foresight as well.

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HOW DO YOU REFLECT? One of the most amusing quotes on thinking comes from Richard Boyatzis,

‘The very moments … we want people to think outside the box, they can’t even see the box.’ If this is true for creativity, then for reflection they also turn blind.

Reflection is often confused with the negative ‘what went wrong’ post-mortem of an incident. In the ‘what went wrongs’, the purpose is not to delve deeper into the self, the team and their conversations. It is a superficial-level interrogation which may not even get a response. The TAR is like a dynamic mirror where we can view our actions, results and also the underlying conversations, intentions and motivations. Teams many times are in a situation of suspended action, and the blame lies with the decision-making or the people involved. In TAR learning, we can uncover the truth and meaning behind such action/inaction.

STORY STUDY Padmaneesh is a high performer on a fast track to success. He came to work for Trikon Systems six years ago as a programmer. In a small company of 250 employees, Padmaneesh was quickly spotted as the most hardworking person with a high speed for learning new things. He had the quickest rise to the position of VP in his company, and the CEO personally mentored him. Padmaneesh now had a team of 78 people. In the last year which he had been managing them, their results doubled, they acquired more clients, the team loved him and their overall results were great. But the CEO also noticed that Padmaneesh now stayed late most nights, handheld too many projects and the team members were totally dependent on him. Learning in Reflection

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The CEO asked about the reasons why he was working late and Padmaneesh said, ‘The project will not be delivered on time if I don’t.’ The company had enough manpower without taxing any one member to overwork. Under the CEOs mentorship, Padmaneesh reflected using the TAR model. The first level of the reflection was on the action. CEO:

Why did the project overshoot the time?

CEO:

But that is not your work. Who is responsible?

CEO:

Is this the first time?

Padmaneesh: We had a few technical issues to iron out, and I already had my calendar full that day so the stretch in the evening. Padmaneesh: The manager responsible was working on something else, and I pitched in. Padmaneesh: Not really. I do it for all team members.

CEO: I see that you have a great relationship. I also see that they are dependent on you. We recruit talented people capable of doing the work they commit to. Then why does your team require so much support?

At this point, Padmaneesh had his first reflection. He reflected on the past projects and the number of times he had to pitch in to do the work. Padmaneesh realized that his team was not performing to their full capacity. He also felt that the last few projects required programming skills which his current team did not excel in. He shared these reflections with his mentor. The first-level reflection paved way to the next level—reflecting on the conversations which led to these actions.

Padmaneesh understood that he had not been having the right conversations. Whenever a problem arose, he would step in to solve the issue. This had created lethargy in the team. They were 162

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using him as a troubleshooter, instead of a leader. Padmaneesh looked into the conversations he had specifically that day.

One of team leaders, Ajay, wanted help in a new program. They had been with this project for almost four months now, and yet Ajay had not taken the initiative to learn the program. He always came to Padmaneesh. He now understood that this was because he did not lead his team, inspire them to grow and take action. The leadership conversations which should have taken place regularly in this team had been missing. Padmaneesh now reflected on how by changing his conversations he could have brought a change in behaviour in his team.

Maybe when issues occurred, he could coach them to solve on their own. He could inspire them to acquire the new skill quickly. He should talk to his team about their aspirations and goals and help them grow. These missing conversations were the real reason why Padmaneesh was working late. If his mentor were to simply ask him the reason for inaction, that talk could also have stopped at the action stage. Linking it in the double-loop reflection creates this awareness. TAR double-loop reflective learning helps us understand how changing the way we talk changes the actions and results around us. The first loop is the action–reflection and the second loop is the reflection on the underlying conversations which led to the action. There are three steps to the TAR learning. These steps are presented as a sequence, but in practice, their implementation should be seen as flexible and opportunistic.

EMBRACE REFLECTION The executive mind involved in analysis always lives in a productive–counterproductive paradox. As explained in Chapter 2, we live in the era of reflective talk, and the inertia holds us back. Analysis and reaction on the action taken disconnects us from the symptoms causing the problems. Acknowledging and embracing Learning in Reflection

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the need for reflection therefore are the first steps towards a holistic reflection and learning experience.

In the story above, Padmaneesh went to the first loop of reflective inquiry willingly as he wanted to grow. Slowly, the CEO took him deeper into the second loop to reflect on the action. The willingness creates the grounds for a deeper exchange.

THE LEFT-HAND COLUMN The left-hand column is a two-column research method developed by Chris Argyris, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, and Donald Schön.4 First published in their book Theory in Practice, this method helps individuals become aware of the tacit assumptions which govern our conversation and contribute to block our purpose in real-life situations and to develop a way of talking about those tacit assumptions more effectively. This method was also extensively used to explain the process of addressing a difficult conversation by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen,5 who teach at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Negotiation Project, in their book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. Applying this technique to TAR, we use it with the modification that the right hand represents the action/reaction that we are reflecting on and the left hand represents the prior conversation that could have caused the said action.

A simple exercise on a piece of paper with a line drawn in the middle is as follows. 1. In the right-hand column, write the action under study. Leave the left-hand column blank till the first loop of learning is completed. 2. Now in the left-hand column, write out the transcript of the conversation and reflect on how it has affected the action. In the following table, we are applying the left-hand column method to the story above. 164

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What Is the Action/Inaction First-loop Learning

1. Ajay: P, I am not sure if this is what the 1. Team members are not completing client requires. Can you take a look? their tasks, and the efficiency in the team has come down. To P: Hmm. Looks okay. Needs just a tweak. Let me ensure that client demands are show you. (P works on it the next two hours.) met, the VP decides to pitch in. Reflection loop 2: Teams are inefficient because P lets Reflection loop 1: Why are the team them be. The short-term cost of this is the long hours P members not efficient? What happens is working on, but the long-term cost will mean that the when they show inefficiency? What are team becomes inefficient and obsolete as they are not the costs of behaving this way? What growing. P needs to have empowering talks with Ajay and kind of conversations contributed others and push them to complete their work themselves. to this situation? What should we 2. Ajay: Thanks, P, it looks better. Can we sit on the next step now? be looking for in the second loop? P: Can you show me the first cut by 2.  Team members are very happy with evening? We can discuss then? P, but the CEO notices that the Ajay: Actually, I am not sure about this code and team is not growing. Their overall the requirement. Can we do this together? capabilities are coming down. P: Sure. No issues. Let me help you. Reflection loop 1: How do you make Reflection loop 2: How is P’s support sabotaging sure that everyone in the team feels the growth of the team? What conversations should valued for their unique contribution? P be having instead? What will be the expected How can P help his team grow together? responses if P changes his conversation?

What Was Said? Second-loop Learning

A NEW HORIZON A double-loop reflection may now give rise to new insights and possible conversations that you need to have. Don’t rush in. Follow the VITAL framework. Start visualizing this new conversation now!

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER Now that we have seen the VITAL framework, it is time to apply this learning in real-time conversations. In Part 3, five such quasireal situations are mentioned. They are quasi-real because while the incident did occur, the exact conversation could not be captured and, therefore, a role-play of the conversations is used. A quick word before you start using the framework: Do not propose marriage in the first 10 days.

Take the time to allow the framework to seep into your talks. Reflect often. Work the double loop and go back to visualizing the next talk. A story I picked up on the Internet reads: A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, ‘I am devoted to studying your system. How long will it take me to master it?’ The teacher’s reply was casual, ‘Ten years.’ Impatiently, the student answered, ‘But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice every day, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?’ The teacher thought for a moment then said, ‘Twenty years.’

Don’t be impatient to see the results. Practise, fail and reflect. Believe Ray Kurzweil’s6 words, ‘Exponential growth looks like nothing is happening, and then suddenly you get this explosion at the end.’

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION (A set of self-coaching tips and tools which you can immediately use in your team)

1. As you look at yours and your team’s action/inaction, what is your learning? 2. What kind of change do you think a change in your talk has brought or can bring in action?

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (Currency, 1994). 2. Chris Argyris and Donald Schön, Theory in Practice ( Jossey-Bass, 1992). 3. Robert W. Putnam, ‘Double Loop Learning,’ in The Sage Encyclopedia of Action Research, ed. David Coughlin and Mary Brydon-Miller (Sage Press, 2014). 4. Argyris and Schön, Theory in Practice. 5. Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversation: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Penguin Books, 2010). 6. Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Penguin Books, 2006).

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PART 3 TALK IN ACTION: FOUR CONVERSATIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL TEAMS

CHAPTER 11 THE FOUR CONVERSATIONS FOR A TEAM’S SUCCESS

Leo Tolstoy begins his novel Anna Karenina1 with the sentence: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Our teams are the same. High-performing teams are all alike in their conversations—they have future-looking intent, set context and invite people, hold the space in the conversation chrysalis and talk with clarity towards action steps.

It is the average team that differs in its conversations in its own way. However, there are four critical types of conversations to ensure the success of any team—each conversation is different and they require unique approaches to navigate. While the elements of a conversation are the same—the initiator, the participant and the topic or problem—and the VITAL framework remains common, the uniqueness lies in the mindset and approach to the elements. The four critical types of conversations to ensure the success of any team are as follows.

CONNECTED CONVERSATIONS These are conversations about relationships—conversation to connect because that is who we are—a connection of hearts and minds. This conversation looks at expanding the scope between the initiator and participant, and the agenda is worked together.

Where Do We Use This Conversation? Connected conversations are the most pervasive of all conversations. Every action needs engagement, and therefore a connected conversation is also the first step to other conversations. We can see such conversations dominating the corridors, lunch rooms, phone conversations, agendaless talks and networking events in our work life. Making the time to understand each team member, building trust and building the bridges to a strong relationship are all part of a connected conversation. Connections expand the talk comfort zone in a team, and people are able to share their thoughts authentically. It builds the rhythm of the team and converts the team into a think tank.

How Do We Identify That Connection Is Lacking? What does disengagement look like? Listening to people who lack empathy, watching a team work in silos, high-performing individuals not able to collaborate, teams with all the strengths and resources not being able to trust each other and work with each other are the result of a lack of connected conversations. When such conversations go missing, we see the following:

• Managers and teams telling and not understanding— the conversations and decision-making move with a linear singularity and then embrace the complexity that truly exists. •

Managers and teams staying in the zone of the known and comfortable—they perform well in these zones but are rarely motivated to step into the pathed waters.

• Finally, when connected conversations go missing, innovation, creativity and newer ideas don’t develop. Stagnation is the true sign of a lack of such talk, for creativity requires confidence to experiment and that requires a psychologically safe space. A connected team alone can provide this space. 172

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The Talk Kaleidoscope and Connected Conversation • As individuals, what was your feeling while looking at the lens of the initiative talk, engaging talk and the lens of talking in groups? • How comfortable are you talking to people without an agenda or problem to solve? • Do you know the person next to you in the office? Where they live, their hobbies and their family? •

Are you comfortable speaking to a new person at work or in personal life?

If you were comfortable answering the questions above and answer positively, your engaging conversations are good. If not, you may need help in understanding how to engage (Chapter 12).

INFLUENCE CONVERSATIONS Conversations which connect and shift perspectives of others are essentially influence conversations. The larger point in such conversations is the connect. Without expanding our awareness and perspectives of others, concentrating only on shifting their perspectives to our agenda is manipulation.

Where Do We Use This Conversation? We use influence in a variety of ways. When a team member shares their idea, they want to influence; when a salesperson speaks with a client, they want to influence; when a manager wants to implement a process, they are influencing. In meetings, presentations and emails, we hold influence conversations the most. The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success

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How Do We Identify That Influence Conversations Are Missing? Influence—the real, connected influence—creates a shift in our perspectives. This requires two fundamental elements: The initiator should understand and empathize the viewpoint of the participant and the participant gets the story of the initiator. We can identify such conversations missing when people don’t know the stories. The stories create the why, the reason behind the initiator’s effort to influence. When empathy towards the participant is missing, this creates a gap in influence too.

In such situations, the biggest consequence will be ‘lack of action’. And that is our trigger that influence conversations are missing.

The Talk Kaleidoscope and Influence Conversation The lens of dialogue in the talk kaleidoscope shows your depth in a conversation. As you remember your one-to-one conversations, how deep are your most important talk? Of the conversations you are having currently, which ones would you want to change in depth? Do you think that your capacity to influence will change if you had deeper connection with your participant? Look into the lens of influence talk. What kind of influential talk are you having in your life? In any conversation, reflect on your intention and think if you are ready to change and to be influenced?

If your answers reflect your deep levels of connect and empathy, your influence conversations may be of the transformational kind. If you find that you require the depth and influence to get action out of people, you need to understand this conversation better (Chapter 13). 174

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CAREER CONVERSATIONS Genuine, meaningful conversations which help the people in the organization grow are called career conversations. The ‘people’ can be full-time or part-time employees or freelancers or consultants. The idea of ‘grow’ can be helping them grow to higher and expanded roles or grow in newer projects, interest and job satisfaction. Such conversations, by their very scope, are outside and above the purview of a performance appraisal.

Where Do We Use This Conversation? Career conversations should be a part of every manager’s conversation with their team. This can be the formal individual development plan or a quick chat to understand what’s happening in the career path of the employee.

These are not to be confused with forms, surveys and other such information-collecting mechanisms. These are also not conversations about promotions and increments. A deep conversation on what the strengths of the team member are, what they want to do and how their feelings are can be developed only one conversation at a time.

How Do We Identify That Career Conversations Are Missing? An extreme indication is the increasing attrition levels. The satisfaction and engagement surveys also show such details.

Another place to look for the missing conversation is the annual performance appraisal. If the only time managers get to know their people and their career interests are the interview, performance appraisal and a few forms in between, then the career conversations are not happening in the team. A simpler way would be to ask if every manager knows the future dreams and career aspirations The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success

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of their people. Do they know the strengths and the gaps their people are working hard to overcome?

Did we hear ‘We do not have the time?’ Disengagement and attrition are a lot more time-consuming than these conversations.

The Talk Kaleidoscope and Career Conversation In the talk kaleidoscope, there is no single lens to look at career conversations. In that sense, any lens will show us the picture too. Consider the lens of self-talk: What conversations about your career, your team’s career, run in your mind? Look into the lens of group talk and consider how much you know about the group’s future dreams, their ambitions, the new courses they are learning or if they love their job. How would you want to deepen these conversations to include career conversations?

What are some of the immobilizing beliefs which are holding you back from having an open and honest talk? If you want to, •

Hold conversations which truly develop your people.

•

Reimagine your role as a growth catalyst for your people.

• Break the cage of the performance appraisal and look into the larger picture for all. •

Master the career conversations (Chapter 14).

DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS These are the conversations no one wants to have. They can be confrontations, sensitive feedback or emotional talk. Whatever their agenda is, these are talks which are not going to be easy, as the people in the conversation are mostly on opposite sides of the fence. Therefore, difficult conversations address how people who butt heads against each other can bump shoulders together in search of 176

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a solution. Instead of differences, they look for the similarity and overcome barriers which hinder their conversation.

Where Do We Use This Conversation? Difficult conversations are used whenever we need to address issues which are behavioural or performance-oriented in nature; in situations which require us to clarify our position in the face of resistance; and in issues which require our honest voice, for remaining silent can turn dangerous. From salvaging a project, a client or our time, difficult conversations are often high-stake, high-involvement conversations which hold emotional importance for us.

How Do We Identify Difficult That Conversations Are Missing? Two clear indications of missing difficult conversations are as follows. • When team members confront and argue frequently, it shows a lack of common ground. The conversation chrysalis is missing in such talks.

• It is also possible that the team has decided to brush all uneasy talk under the proverbial carpet. Therefore, an abundance of polite, peaceful talks which skirt on the edges of issues and never go deep into the heart of a conversation indicates that difficult conversations are missing.

The Talk Kaleidoscope and Difficult Conversation As individuals, what does the talk kaleidoscope show while you look into the difficult talk lens?

Remember the conversations which you did not want to have. Did they end up in silence? Confrontations? Or transformational opportunities? The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success

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How comfortable are you holding deep conversations in a dialogue? When you look at the lens of self-talk, what are you looking at? In the above questions, if your answers are positive and generative, you probably handle difficult conversations just fine. In case your answers show confrontations or silence, you may need help in difficult conversations (Chapter 15).

HOW IS EACH TALK DIFFERENT? Two constant questions running in my mind during the research and preparation stage for VITAL conversations were as follows: 1. Is there really a significant difference between the four conversations? 2. What psychological shifts in mindset and talk are we really looking for? 178

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WHAT HAPPENS BELOW THE SURFACE? A popular, apocryphal tale is of Ernest Hemingway’s claim that he could write a novel in six words, among his writer friends one evening in 1930. A quick wager of 10 dollars was set, and Hemmingway wrote: ‘For sale: Baby shoes, never worn’. Every reader has felt the deep emotions in those simple words. According to Hemmingway, an author does not have to explicitly reveal the deeper meaning of a story. The reader is intelligent enough. In our conversations also, this rule of Hemmingway works wonderfully. Much like an iceberg, what we speak, the visible and factual part, is but the tip of the iceberg, and much of the interpersonal part, the interpretation, listening and the space of the conversation, itself is the hidden part. What happens below the surface is the reason the conversations become sticky and chaotic. As existing theories, models and research on what lies below the surface are huge. Some of the most relevant ones have shaped the talk action models and concepts.

J. L. Austin,2 a British philosopher and the author of How To Do Things with Words, considers language as a sort of action, rather than a medium to express. According to him, people use language not just to assert things but also to do things. His speech act theory has three categories. 1. Locutionary act: This is the act of saying something. It has a meaning, and it creates an understandable utterly to convey or express.

2. Illocutionary act: It is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed to saying something. The illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it. It is well-versed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings or emotions. There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionary utterance. It is often used as a tone of warning in day-to-day life. The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success

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3. Perlocutionary act: It normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the audiences. The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or emotions. The effect upon the addressee is the main character ship of perlocutionary utterances.

In this theory, the emphasis is on the language and dialogue itself, and it looks at the impact the words create.

William Isaacs3 looks into dialogue from a deeper lens, and in his book Dialogue, he presents three fundamental levels of human interactions.

1. Capacity for new behaviour: To produce coherent actions, the dialogic approach requires us to be aware of the contradictions between what we say and what we do. 2. Predictive intuition: It is the ability to see the forces of conversations operating below the surface, enabling us to liberate stuck structures of interaction and promote a fluid method to think and work together.

3. Architecture of the invisible: To provide wholesome space for dialogue by becoming more conscious of the atmosphere of the conversation, we may have profound effects in our worlds. Drawing on these models, we get the three fundamental elements in a VITAL conversation: the initiator, the participant and the agenda/problem/topic. Let us understand each element from below-the-surface psyche. The initiator: This is ‘you’—the person reading the book, the person creating transformation inside a conversation, the person initiating a talk. It is your responsibility to navigate the talk and hold the space of conversation for true transformation to occur. The participant: This is the other member/members in a conversation. They come to the talk with their opinions, ideas and 180

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perceptions and carry their own space into the conversation. This is not just a single human, and the conversation is not just a few words—they are entire lives, emotions, relationships and action inside each conversation.

The agenda/topic/problem: This represents the ‘what’ of the talk. What are we talking about? What do we want to achieve? This is the issue on the table, the outcome we look forward to. The space: The space represents the flow of the conversation. All conversations take space in our emotions, our minds and our actions. The kind of space these conversations take decides how deep and transformative the conversation can become. The space is specifically mentioned as a dotted line in the picture, as this is a flow and each conversation has its own shape. To answer the first question of the chapter: ‘Is there really a significant difference between the four conversations?’ The flow created in the space between the elements creates the four conversations. Let us see how.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CONVERSATION ELEMENTS IN THE FOUR CONVERSATIONS Conversation #1: Connected Conversations The connected conversations are about building trust and connection. Here, the interaction is the action. In such conversations, the initiator and participant play a bigger role.

What Happens When the Participant Is Invisible? The missing participant psyche is the problem behind all disengaged conversations. When the initiator considers themselves or the agenda more important than the participant, the balance among the elements tilts. The initiator’s awareness of the space of the participant is diminished, and in such times, the engagement is missing. The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success

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Talk shift: Expand the space of the participant without the agenda. By expanding the space of the participant and welcoming their space into the conversation, connection builds.

Conversation #2: Influence Conversations The influence conversations are about understanding the other person and then inviting them to our viewpoint. Influence is more about empathy than about persuasion.

The Participant Is Not a Tool The reason why many conversations do not influence is that the initiator takes a myopic view of using the participant as a tool to achieve an agenda. Talk Shift: Understand the space the participant occupies and then invite them to your viewpoint.

Conversation #3: Career Conversations Career conversations are all about alignment—alignment of individual aspirations with team and organization, alignment of responsibility and accountability, and alignment of conversations with employees and career development.

The Ecosystem Is as Important as the Elements In the career conversation, we see the alignment of the three elements equally and the role of the dotted ecosystem line. The career conversations are the responsibility of every team member and leader in the organization. The interaction and dynamics of individuals and team give this conversation its value. Talk shift: Understand the rhythm of the elements in the conversation. 182

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Conversation #4: Difficult Conversations Difficult conversations occur when the initiator and the participant have differing views or priorities about the agenda. The conversation turns difficult because of the difference and can turn into an opportunity when looked as new ways to the agenda. Talk shift: Concentrate on the similarity in the agenda and work towards the differences.

ARE YOU READY? Reflecting on the questions and ideas above should give you an idea about how the five conversations are important to the success of a team. Read on to understand how to successfully navigate each of these conversations. Once you have felt their power, you could navigate them naturally in your daily work life.

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Fingerprint! Publishing, 2016). 2. J. L. Austin, How To Do Things with Words (Oxford paperbacks, 1976). 3. William Isaacs, Dialogue and the art of thinking together (Doublebay, 1999).

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CHAPTER 12 CONNECTED CONVERSATIONS

Namaste: The divine in me bows to the divine in you.

An Indian greeting

If lived to its fullest intent, the meaning of namaste helps us drop all the walls that separate us and allows us to see, feel and connect truly with others. What if we really spoke in this true spirit in our teams? What if we could see the people for who they really are and not simply who we want them to be?

In their book Ubuntu! An Inspiring Story about an African Tradition of Teamwork and Collaboration, authors Stephen Lundin and Bob Nelson1 talk about the tribes of northern Natal in South Africa, whose most common greeting, equivalent to ‘hello’ in English, is the expression: Sawu bona. It literally means, ‘I see you.’ If you are a member of the tribe, you might reply by saying ‘Sikhona’, which means, ‘I am here.’ The order of the exchange is important: Until you see me, I do not exist. It’s as if when you see me, you bring me into existence. This meaning, implicit in the language, is part of the spirit of ubuntu, a frame of mind prevalent among native people in Africa below the Sahara. The word ‘ubuntu’ stems from the folk saying ‘Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu’, which, from Zulu, literally

translates as: ‘A person is a person because of other people.’ If you grow up with this perspective, your identity is based upon the fact that you are seen—that the people around you respect and acknowledge you as a person.

WHAT IS A CONNECTED CONVERSATION? Is connected conversation not the culmination of engagement, influence, career growth and dealing with tough situations? Connection has been the one conversation which has haunted me the most with its difference and depth. Yes, it is a culmination of all four and yet it is something more. Conversations which identify with people and engage them in a way that builds trust and inspires action are connected conversations .

Connectedness is the underlying rhythm in any team conversation and is the most essential element to build high-performing teams. As evolutionary psychologists argue that humans are social animals, our behaviour is driven by biological mechanisms which prompt us to form connections with others. All of us feel a need to belong; we are intrinsically motivated to forge and sustain strong positive interpersonal relationships, to seek company and to affiliate with others.

Positive organizational relationships promote and facilitate an amiable, friendly working environment as well as well-being among employees, which in turn can result in beneficial effects, such as increased performance.

HOW DO WE BUILD CONNECTEDNESS INSIDE A CONVERSATION? People connect when they trust. In a conversation, they are consciously or subconsciously asking these questions: 186

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Do you care about me?

•

Do I trust you?

• •

Do you see me?

Can we add value?

Do You Care about Me? Genuine care creates emotional connection between people. If we don’t value people, we cannot add value for them. Care opens the door to connection and therefore is the first step. How do we show we care? By truly listening in our conversations, the said and the unsaid words. By understanding them and holding a deeper desire to help, we show our care.

Do You See Me? The biggest obstacle to connection is our inability to see through the lens of another person. Building empathy in our conversations is important. People who feel that they are ‘seen’ will speak openly. Doing this allows the most challenging talk to happen positively.

Do I Trust You? Trust is vital in any honest conversation. Typically, trust is often assumed and taken for granted. Candour in conversation requires trust in people. Expectation theories from Rosenthal’s Pygmalion to Placebo Effect point towards the connection between participants in a trust-based relationship, which has positive impact on productivity and growth.

Can We Add Value? Connection is not about what you can do but how you can add value and believe in your team’s ability to add value. Connected Conversations

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When connected conversations go missing, team collaboration suffers. Do these problems look familiar? • •

Did any team member contribute in a less than meaningful way in any team meetings? Was there any evidence of redundant work or rework during the project?

• Did any team member ever try to stick to a particular perspective a bit too long? • Were some of the meetings ineffective, or did any of them end without specific and clear action steps?

These indicate the lack of connected conversations, which is better highlighted in the following story.

Aravind was in the mid of a conversation storm. He was the VPHR of a small regional telecom company in the early 2000s. Soon their company merged with a national giant, and now they were a regional circle to a national telecom company. The merger itself was considered one of the smoothest ones in the industry. However, sales numbers were slipping, customer care was overworked and yet the customers kept complaining, the need to level up to the brand image of the national parent company was high and therefore the senior leadership created a crossfunctional team to address this issue.

The team consisted of five VPs of the company: Aravind from HR, Sumathi from Customer Care, Srikanth from Finance, Shanti from Marketing and Raghav from Sales. The team decided to meet one afternoon to discuss the issue and look for solutions. Just before the meeting, Aravind was called in by his boss and told to manage the team’s dynamics: 188

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‘We need a good report, Aravind, to send to the head office, you understand?’ Everyone strolled inside the conference room and Aravind began, ‘I know you have all thought about the issues you are facing and possible solutions. So, let’s hear them. Sumathi?’ Sumathi:  My biggest problem is that I need more manpower. Our customer numbers increased in the last year, and the customer care team is overworked. The tech team keeps reassuring that the problems are resolved, but new ones crop up and my team faces the fire. There is only so much we can do. Also, Shanti, guys our team had no idea about the new advert till it hit the market. That day was a nightmare on the floor. I think more manpower will be my first point, Aravind, the rest is efficiency from other teams. Srikanth:  Sumathi, that is just not going to happen. Centre wants to cut cost. We cannot lay off people, as the merger agreement states, but there is no way we can bring more people in. Sumathi, look at quality and time sheets and design more efficient programmes for the Customer Care team. Sumathi:  Are you telling me how to run my ship? Srikanth:  I am telling you that we don’t have a budget for hiring. Right now, we need to concentrate on bringing money in. Raghav, man, tell me you have ideas. Raghav:  My boys are doing fantastic, but the channel partners, our retail stores, are just not committed. To top it, customers are constantly complaining. Shanti, we need something new—a product that will sell itself. Think it over guys. Shanti:  Marketing and new product development are now managed by the head office. Connected Conversations

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Aravind:  So we are all doing good in our teams, and that’s a good starting point. But we need to solve the issue of dropping sales and improving customer service. Sumathi:  I told you, give me more people. Srikanth:  Not happening, Sumathi.

INTERIM ANALYSIS Let’s take a quick look at the story action at this point: • •

Has the meeting been effective?

What problems can we observe?

It is easily observed that the conversation was ineffective and sadly a common occurrence in many meetings.

What Went Wrong? The first impression is that all members were working in their independent silos. This was not a team but a political representation, where leaders try to protect their territory. Even before the meeting began, Aravind was concentrating on the report that should be submitted post the meeting. This change in focus automatically would create a shallow, transactional interaction, as Aravind was not worried about the solution. Sumathi had decided to use the meeting as a platform to put her request as the solution to the problem. She was working entirely on her personal agenda.

Srikanth entered into the meeting feeling threatened. He was defensive and felt that he had to protect his turf or else he would be tilting the budget.

Raghav and Shanti tried to minimize the situation by not exploring anything deeper. Shanti froze her response by saying that all the decisions were from the head office and Raghav faked his enthusiasm by blaming on channel partners. 190

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THE TEAM DYNAMICS The dynamics of a team development which people easily identify with and understand is Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation–Behavior (FIRO–B) developed by Dr William Schutz.3 It remains the most relevant, simple and accessible of all the team development models. Schutz grouped team interpersonal needs into three categories: inclusion, control and affection.

The first stage is called inclusion, for it is here that people determine if they are, and if they feel they are, a team member. Team members may not be very mentally productive in this phase, for their focus will be on their own emotional needs and concerns. People will look towards guidance and leadership at this stage. It is a dependent stage in energy levels and conversations are still not collective. Fortunately, this is a short phase, and people soon move towards asserting themselves. The second stage is that of individual assertion. It is a time of expressing power and of extending boundaries. Animals do this; they mark out their territory. The polite business term for it is the establishment of roles and functions. It is a phase in which people try out and discover their strengths, and the team may make up in productivity what it lacks in cohesiveness.

The third stage is the affection stage where there is cooperation. The energy is interdependent on team members, and it is here that we need our teams to be. In the book Coaching for Performance, the author John Whitmore sites the two insightful examples: If a team is in the affection stage and one of its members has a bad day, the others will rally round and support; if it is in the assertion stage, the others may quietly celebrate the fall of a competitor; and if it is in the inclusion stage, few will know or care. On the other hand, if a team is in the affection stage and a team member has a personal triumph, the rest will join in the celebration; however, if the team is in the assertion stage, the rest may become Connected Conversations

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jealous; and if the team is in the inclusion stage, the others could even feel threatened. How can our conversations accelerate our teams to work in the affection stage?

ELEMENTS OF A CONNECTED CONVERSATION The answer is in the room; the team needs to arrive at it. That is the first belief that a team needs to have before they enter the meeting. A positive belief in the process automatically shifts our intentions, and therefore our actual talk becomes positive. There are four aspects to a connected conversation that a team can work on to reach the affection stage in team dynamics.

Bring Down the Fence As can be seen, all the members in the meeting were speaking from their individual silo. This created the disconnect. It is not that they were wrong, it is more that they were looking at the picture ground up. From the ground, we can see a lot of fences man made and protect themselves inside these boundaries. Flying higher, we can see only a single stretch of land. In the same way, thinking at the organizational level is important, and the department fences need to come down.

Susan Scott in her book Fierce Conversations calls this the beach ball reality.4 Imagine that every member of this group is standing in one colour of the strip of a giant beach ball. They would experience reality only from their colour. Those are the fences that create conversation silos. An invite to look at the situation from a higher plane is required. The second step—invite—when done right can help in bringing down these fences. It will move the team from the inclusion and assertion stage to the affection stage.

Expand the Talk Comfort Zone There is an invisible line drawn just before honest, vulnerable conversations. The team acknowledges it and stays in the safe and 192

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polite zone. This talk comfort zone needs to be stretched so that the people feel safe talking about the things that truly can bring a change. In the inclusion stage, there is not much connect; in the assertion stage, the comfort zone is based on individual esteem. Holding the conversation chrysalis is the place the talk comfort zone would move to affection zone.

The Missing Link: Interaction The visible lack of interaction among various departments could be easily seen. What was also missing were the invisible ones. The missing conversations in this situation were Shanthi and her interaction with the head office, Raghav’s interaction with channel partners, Aravind’s interaction in this meeting, Srikanth’s interaction with Sumathi, and Sumathi’s interaction with Sales, Marketing and Tech teams. These should have been deeper conversations for the intended holistic picture to emerge. Missing conversations are a result of silo working.

The Chain of Meaning In any connected conversation, the team intent is important. It describes how the team envisions the situation at the conclusion of the project. This shows what success would look like. The purpose is to help set a ‘north star’ which helps team members make project choices. The team intent is based on the principles of commander’s intent, a key military planning element to help a plan maintain relevancy and applicability in a chaotic, dynamic and resourceconstrained environment. From the intent, a chain of meaning is created, which includes all members and their ideas. This inclusive chain of meaning connects the team’s people with its purpose.

APPLYING THE VITAL FRAMEWORK If the team made these changes in their conversations and actually used the VITAL framework, their conversations may progress in the following manner. Connected Conversations

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Aravind and the rest of the team first took the time to visualize their end goal. At the same time, to avoid talking from inside their fences, the team used the talk reframe to ensure that they kept the meeting positive and future-looking. In the invite stage, Aravind set the context using the team intent and people brought in their views through the talk reframe.

At the outset, he asked if anyone could speak on what the outcome of the meeting would be.

Most of the team were sceptical and felt this was a waste of time.

Aravind understood that the team was still in its inclusion stage and the fences were strong. Instead of moving into the agenda, he worked on the missing element—interaction. Everyone shared experiences and stories of successes and problems. At the end of this interaction, which was an agendaless initiative conversation, surprisingly the team now wanted to improve the issues facing them. The fences were lowered, and the common ground was now in sight. Storytelling proved to be greatest invitation to this team. Aravind now moved on with the talk reframe to chart the agenda again.

Aravind:  If we were meeting to celebrate the win of this project, how would our teams and company be? What will be the reality? What are we trying to achieve?

Sumathi:  I guess there will be far lesser complaints from customers. Our team will also have more information regarding products, offers and process whenever any change is planned. So can we achieve that? Shanthi:  Let me look into the current process and then I will ensure that the missing links in information are provided every time. Maybe, Aravind, we need to link this to training needs for the Customer Care team. 194

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Srikanth (moving towards the whiteboard): Let me map this for us. Our intent is more sales and satisfied customers. Let me keep adding the elements that will help us achieve this intent. By setting the context right, the team easily moved into the conversation chrysalis. For the next couple of hours, the team managed to fill the whiteboard with even the minutest of tasks required to bring in the required change. In the stage of integrating commitment and accountability, the barriers to goals were explored in detail. They figured out that a lot of required information were missing. That is, the team at this moment had no idea. For example, Raghav knew he had issues with the channel partners but did not know the nature of their problems. This established the next set of performance steps and the support that would be required.

Action steps were then formed, and a spectrum for improvisation was also included. The next few weeks, each member of the team worked towards their role in the team. Raghav ran mini research to collect all the problems the channel partners had, and the team then decided that they needed to help the channel partners. This was the missing interaction that each member of the team was not having with the other people in the organization. This missing element of connection made teams to work inside their fences. Sumathi, after all the study, still needed more manpower and Srikanth decided to relook from his side. The team established a few new processes to align better customer service. The learning loop here is for everyone. Believing that ‘interaction is the action’ is a very important aspect of a connected conversation. Through this connection, the team that was working behind their fences rose to become a think tank for the organization.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION... 1. Create a clear team intent.

2. Reframe your goals to positive and future-looking ones. 3. Expand the talk comfort zone to connect truly. 4. Invite and set context.

5. Hold the conversation chrysalis for everyone. 6. Align action steps.

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Stephen Lundin and Bob Nelson, Ubuntu: An Inspiring Story about an African Tradition of Teamwork and Collaboration (Broadway Books, 2010). 2. Keli McGregor quotes. 3. William Schutz, The Interpersonal Underworld (Science and Behavior Books, 1966), first published as FIRO: A Three-dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958). 4. Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations (Penguin, 2004).

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CHAPTER 13 INFLUENCE CONVERSATIONS

You cannot antagonise and influence at the same time

J. S. Knox

Do you feel or have tried to do something good for others—your family, friends or team—but they just didn’t ‘get’ it?

Have you felt, ‘If only they understood my viewpoint, we all will win?’ You are not alone, the problem is not that ‘they’ don’t get it, and persuasion is definitely not influence. Today, the decision to assume a management role comes with a front-row seat to a number of challenges. You must do more with less. It’s become cliché to master cost reduction and speed up delivery time with almost no resource. In addition to navigating unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, you must also meet ever-expanding expectations—more sales, better service and bigger projects. This fast-pace, mindless role quickly leads to strategies which glorify selling, pushing products down our throats and using manipulation as a means for influence. Such practices can be seen on TV, social media, in streets, stores and online. The customers and public in

general are therefore on guard. They see a smile, and their minds immediately stand in attention, mental hands on the gun.

A quick search about influence conversations immediately throws back words like: how to persuade, get them to say yes and influence to get more sales. The literature out there is filled with short-term transactional manipulation which does not look into the longterm relationships. So, yes, you are not alone.

The second point was that ‘The problem is not that “they” don’t get it.’ Good intentions are never good enough. This is because they don’t stimulate others to act. The minute we think ‘How can I make my team do _____ or how can I make my client to ______ or how can I get my son to _____ or boss to _____’, we are showing good intentions but are pushing it. We are not holding conversations which will influence them. In fact, by pushing our intentions, we are reducing our influence.

Warning lights should go off every time we feel compelled to reach into our bag of influence tools and pull out a hammer. In these situations, you are blinded by your point of view, agenda or intentions, however good they might be. Even if you are right, you fail because others will not get you, because you have not yet understood them. When such conversations occur, the third element in the talk—the participant—their viewpoint, agenda and intentions are missing, and such a conversation then becomes ineffective.

WHAT IS AN INFLUENTIAL CONVERSATION? Conversations which truly connect with people and focus on expanding the agenda to have greater results for all are called influence conversations. It is about shifting the conversation from ‘only’ my intention to include and embrace the views of others. Let’s take an example to understand how this shift works. Influence Conversations

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Gayathri had to work with two managers in a cross-functional team to create a project plan which everyone would agree to. After weeks of working on the plan, she finally presented to the team. The entire team, except for the two managers, agreed to her plan. They both had questions and took their positions in opposite ends of the conflict spectrum. Gayathri had expected this, as the battle lines for the two managers were always drawn.

Needless to say, the progress from plan to action got stuck in the trenches of conflict. Time and budget constraints were troubling Gayathri, but there was nothing that she could do. The mistake was with the managers, wasn’t it?

It is natural in such circumstances for people in Gayathri’s position to fire off emails to the team and use pressure to complete the project. The wider impacts of such relations are strained relationships and low-quality output. Let us try to shift towards influence.

The Influence Triangle Influence conversations are connecting conversations. By expanding our sphere of awareness and empathy to include the other elements in the conversation, we create true influence.

The influence triangle is a simple model to help us expand our awareness to feel what other people’s worlds are like. The three dimensions to the triangle are the same as the elements of a conversation; only their dynamics change. Influence is what happens below the surface. How does the influence triangle use the three elements of conversation?

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The Influence Triangle

The participant: To shift our focus to the minds of the participant and shift our perspective; to be truly walking in their shoes for a while and to empathize with their concerns Topic/focus/agenda: To look at the wider context and see the dynamics between self and participant towards the agenda

By expanding our empathy instead of a disconnected threepoint conversation, we will have a holistic talk. In the example of Gayathri, her influence triangle looks something like this. Self: Gayathri has put in a lot of effort for the project plan, and it is important for her that the project is completed on time and with great quality.

Participant: These are the two managers, specifically. Gayathri has a clear disconnect with the two of them, as she has no idea what is important to them. Once she expands her conversations to truly understand her team, she will be able to see their point of view and then influence them. At this stage, there is a clear information deficit.

Agenda: This is to complete the project on time. Again, this is the agenda for Gayathri and maybe even for the company. The issue therefore is in understanding the participant.

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provoke learning more than defensiveness, focus on people and don’t kill the messenger.

How does such awareness and the influence triangle operationalize inside a conversation? In the following story study between Tanvi and her leadership team, we will explore this using the VITAL framework in action to influence.

A STORY STUDY Tanvi took a deep breath before she entered the conference room. This was her first meeting with her senior leadership team. As she entered the room, she met the friendly gazes of the three men across the table, the founders of Lupt Kala, a boutique firm which specializes in reviving original Indian art forms. The three founders wanted to provide a platform which supports and encourages the original Indian arts, be it painting, weaving, pottery, sculpting or puppetry, to reach the offices and homes of the modern world. Aditya, Tushar and Rohit had been part of a road trip and shared their love for travel and a search for uniqueness in their world. That trip unfurled their dream into a vision for a business, and they began Lupt Kala six years go. Between the three men, they lead finance, operations and supply chain and sales. They spoke with original artists and experts of unique long-lost traditional arts and found interested customers who cherish such handcrafted love.

Now they had a growing customer base, and Tanvi was their marketing director, recruited just last week to tackle the increasing demand and also to reach the international markets. As the meeting began, Tanvi said, ‘I have had a chance to look into your sales and customer records, and I see that you 202

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do not have much data to customer preferences. I propose to immediately run a few customer-related surveys so that we know what they want.’ Rohit, who lead sales, replied, ‘That’s because our customers don’t know what they want and, frankly, I cannot wait for them to tell me how to run my business.’

Tanvi was surprised, ‘The idea is to increase the presence of your company in both domestic and international markets. If I don’t know what they are looking for, how will I reach them?’

Aditya, whose idea started this venture, tried to explain, ‘Look, Tanvi, we are not your average online shop, selling cheap imitation products. We have a vision to revive the true and unique arts of this land and make the world see its richness. That is why the name of the company is Lupt Kala—lost art. The customers you talk about don’t know about these art forms and, frankly, I believe that if I ask them, they would probably suggest something like using Saanjhi Kala in customized wedding photos.’ Tanvi was not convinced on this argument, ‘Taking your vision to the larger public and creating a growing potential customer base are two different things and require different marketing strategies. At least let me know their purchase intent and motivators. Let me run something simple. You have a huge fan base on Facebook. But there is not much engagement there. Let me engage these people and find out about them.’ Rohit was adamant, ‘Tanvi, we don’t want to take diluted suggestions from our customers to our artists. They are the creative experts, and our first loyalty is towards them. Those who like our product will buy from us.’

Tanvi had no idea what she was doing in this team and this organization.

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Many teams like Tanvi, Aditya, Rohit and Tushar, despite their ideas to collaborate, tend to spend their talk time offering their opinions. And all too often, such talks fail us.

Instead of creating something new and beautiful, we polarize and argue. At a time when we need to think collectively because our own individual capacity is not enough or the problem is high stakes, that is when we tend to stubbornly stick to our end of the argument. Maybe that is exactly what Tanvi and the founders needed—a cooler environment to refocus. Tanvi was specifically recruited to increase the marketing side of the business.

Yet in the meeting the talk was polarized and Tanvi was not made to feel welcome. The founders had a beautiful vision, but they did not share it with Tanvi. Also, the founders had gone tunnelvisioned into their thoughts that they failed to realize that there could be a point in Tanvi’s argument. As a part of the team now, Tanvi needs to share the vision of the company. Unfortunately, she believes that she is an island. Her usage of ‘your’ in citing problems and ‘I’ in working solutions polarizes the ‘we’ from existing. The meeting which could have become the fertile ground where another creative mind joined the team to create newer ripples in marketing which could probably take the company to international shores was sadly stuck in the ‘what are we doing’ stage. In the story study, both Tanvi and the founders were hijacked by their need to win; the talk, therefore, moved from neutral to a competitive, self-serving, polarized view, motivated only by their need to be right. This polarization did not occur during the conversation but much before it. The two teams were polarized before the talk began. Their intentions were competitive. Stephen Covey1 in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People narrates a story of a group of soldiers navigating way through a 204

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jungle. The dense jungle needs to be cut to create a walkable path and its exhausting work in the hot humid jungle. The sergeant, therefore, rotates the soldiers to take turns hacking down the branches to create a path. After a point, one of the captains decides to climb a tree to see the path better and suddenly shouts, ‘We are in the wrong jungle.’ Tanvi in her situation is also currently in this position where she needs to climb the metaphorical tree with openness, see the larger outcomes and get the others out of their blind hacking of the trees.

APPLYING THE VITAL FRAMEWORK Tanvi needs to reframe her intentions and look at the team in front of her. Visualizing this way, Tanvi knows that the company and its vision hold huge emotional value for its founders. In the talk reframe, Tanvi turns the objective to the following: •

•

How can I use my marketing skills to showcase the passion of Lupt Kala and the true talents of the artists to a wider world? What would I like them to think, feel and do by the end of the meeting?

With this thought, Tanvi is open-minded and curious and invites first herself to being influenced. In the meeting, she spends time listening to the passionate stories of the founders. By truly being with them in their journey, Tanvi understands what they feel. The first objective has Tanvi listening to their stories and, for the second objective, she uses powerful questions. Tanvi is clear that she wants the founders to think along the lines of a larger market, feel their vision and passion carried to millions more and she wants them to listen to her plans in an open-minded fashion.

The first step in influencing others is to be ready to be influenced. Tanvi truly listens to their vision and the deep love that the three friends have towards reviving the arts and crafts. By listening to their stories, Tanvi understands where they come from. She knows Influence Conversations

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that if she could showcase this perspective to the audience, they will grow.

Moving to the conversation chrysalis, Tanvi needs to begin the straight line persuasion as said by Belfort. Jordan Belfort,2 The Wolf of Wall Street, went to prison, then came out and put together his sales programme called straight line persuasion. According to him, when you engage a client, your job is to move them from where they are to where you want them to be—an ideal client. In order to get them to that ideal destination, there are lots of conversations that need to happen. Of course, it would be ideal if there were no conflicts and the founders just loved Tanvi, but reality comes with counterquestions, doubts and arguments. This, however, is healthy, as Tanvi has moved to the space of connected conversations. To now influence the founders to her way of thinking, Tanvi moves back to storytelling. She paints a picture of how she could carry original stories of the artists, their histories and the work they do and also showcase their talents through videos. She could then collaborate with designers to create modern spaces which showcase these pieces. Tanvi goes on with her story and slowly opens doors to influence the founders to a great marketing plan.

It is only in the action planning stage that she says that she needs a few quick surveys so that she understands the market too. As the founders are not threatened by her approach and Tanvi is now part of the vision, there is no objection. The learning here is in the story.Influence begins with understanding and being ready to be influenced. Using stories to understand and storytelling to influence is a double-loop conversation. The process is simple: Listen to the story, ask powerful questions, understand your audience, tell your story and bring them to your side.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION 1. Reframe your objective to understand.

2. Have clarity on your influence triangle. 3. Listen to the stories to understand. 4. Ask powerful questions to clarify. 5. Tell your story to truly influence.

6. Bring audience to your side through listening and insight.

NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Stephen Covey ibid. 2. Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of Wall Street (Hachette Publishers, 2008).

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CHAPTER 14

CAREER CONVERSATIONS

I want my career to mean something. I want to grow and contribute. I want the 60/80 hours I work every week to reflect some change and make a contribution. I hope I can speak about these to someone.

An employee (maybe you/yours?)

Rishab, the HR head of a giant life sciences company, has faced many challenges in his illustrious career spanning 23 years. He has lead the HR of the current company for the past six years, and under him the engagement surveys have showed better results and people have grown immensely. It was with this experience and confidence that he had developed the new performance– talent review system.

The company had decided to diversify into agri biotechnology, and they needed a person to head their R&D operations. Rishab’s team followed the usual procedure of looking at internal candidates before approaching a premium executive searching firm. After about a month and a hefty payment, Bala, the head of the executive search firm, sat across the desk to Vikas, their CEO and Rishab. ‘We have a situation, Vikas,’ he said.

Vikas was completely unprepared for what came next.

Bala continued, ‘We have searched for profiles of job seekers and have found four candidates who may be a good fit for what you have in mind.’ Vikas saw the ‘but’ approaching. Bala’s body language screamed uncomfortable. Bala took a deep breath and said, ‘Our strongest candidate ticks all the boxes, Vikas, and he currently works in your company.’

Looking back, this was probably the one situation that Rishab truly did not anticipate. It was embarrassing and a rude wake-up call to the talent management inside his company.

They had the perfect candidate, but the company’s internal talent team did not find this opportunity, which meant, first, the company lost a lot of money and time on a wild goose chase and, second, one of their star performers was unhappy and had decided to leave the team and they had no idea about it. Vikas, of course, wanted to know what was going on. How could they have missed the candidate?

Rishab was shocked to find out about the candidate as well. They had first gone through the internal candidates. They had mailed the opportunity to all heads of business units and asked them to share their interest or suggest candidature. There had been no interest from the candidates’ unit. What troubled Rishab the most was that he was the chief architect of the new performance– talent review system with a mission which currently mocked them all—to place the best person in every job.

ANALYSING THE CONVERSATION How did they miss the opportunity to place a talented person, that too in such a high position? Why did the candidate not approach them of his interest first?

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Another question was: Who is to be blamed? The people—Rishab and the candidate—or the issue—the process in this case?

‘The people’ explanation to the problem would mean that we look into the intentions, attitudes, work methods, motivation and personality of the individuals. We could say that Rishab was too-process oriented and did not know his people. Or that the candidate was not proactive enough and did not show the responsibility towards his career. Both the options seem logical, but they don’t allow us the space to solve the problem. In many such cases, we just call these situations impossible and move on. Blaming people for a problem also makes us believe that the only solution can be if one of the people leaves the situation, hence the reason to quit the organization. ‘The process’ explanation is even more dangerous. Sometimes the arguments to such topics can be that the issue itself is a tricky one. From this viewpoint, nothing can happen, as the issue was supposed to fail from the beginning. When we say that the subject matter is a problem, we admit defeat before the conversation begins.

For instance, the current generation shows little value to hierarchy, what is the point of mentoring? Or the talent review system is just a waste of time, who will notice my interest? ‘The real reason’ why such career mishaps happen in teams and organizations is that we do not focus on ‘how’ the conversations around the careers of members happen. It is not simply Rishab or the process, it is the way this conversation should take place. What is missing is a career conversation.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A CAREER CONVERSATION? Conversations which help people in your organization grow are called career conversations. They are the genuine, meaningful conversations which provoke thinking and responsibility for their career in people. Career Conversations

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The above definition contains two words, ‘people’ and ‘grow’, which have the ability to take unlimited ways of understanding. People: It might be easier to say everybody who impact your organization’s performance, but that will be a vague term. People are all those humans who contribute to and grow along with the company. They are the full-time employees, the parttime and gig contributors, consultants, channel partners and other collaborative touchpoints. Grow: Helping people develop into their roles, expand their current roles to higher positions or lateral moves, finding satisfaction, engagement and achievement in their roles or help them achieve this for a new role are all growing and hence career conversations.

A simple question to understand the career conversation will be: Do we know the dreams and aspirations of our team? Do we know their challenges, interests and what they are striving to achieve? Have we aligned their aspirations with the team and organizational goals? In the above story, imagine if Rishab knew the kind of details that Bala knew about the candidate. Would that not change the growth opportunities and performance in the organization? An important distinction to be made is that a career conversation is not about promotions, increments, performance appraisal and filling of forms. It is a conversation about understanding where your team member wants to be in three or five years. It is not just a role increase but the kind of work they may want to do, the work–life balance, the degree of collaboration and autonomy they are looking towards, the passion they want to chase. As the business scenario unfolds new requirements, job requirements change as well. Every organization must therefore be responsible of the people whose skillsets can become obsolete in future and direct them to better opportunities. Such conversations empower the employees to become more proactive in crafting 212

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their next steps and match their aspirations to the responsive and agile decisions of the company.

Essentially, such conversations allow individuals to influence and take responsibility for their career destiny. A good career conversation should:

• Discuss long-term individual aspirations and how these align with the company’s objectives • Determine what employees enjoy/dislike about their current role

• Identify any existing or perceived obstacles to career development •

Explore opportunities they feel would help them develop

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Educate them on the full range of development opportunities available besides upwards promotion

• Advise them on any further experience or skills they may need to develop to support with their goals

• Encourage them to take ownership for their career development

While no one can deny the importance of career conversations in any organization, the actual occurrence of such conversations is not common. The reasons being the following: First is the belief that regular one-to-one conversations might be time-consuming. This is simply not true. By not considering the growth of our people, we may end up spending a lot of time and money in managing performance, engagement and attrition. The second reason is that a career conversation is wrapped inside the performance management process. This diminishes its context, and the actual conversation gets lost. Like the new performance– talent review system that Rishab had. Such processes take to account the dimensions of performance and maybe even potential within the organizational context. But the career aspirations of Career Conversations

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the individual are not considered. Unfortunately, this also gives the organization a false sense of accomplishment and security that they have a great talent management system. Every missing conversation here however leads to the depletion of the talent pool. The last, of course, is the confusion around the talk itself. Some questions that managers have asked when presented with the career conversation are as follows: •

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What if the employee is also only using this talk for getting a promotion?

What if I find out that they are really unhappy, what can I do? I also work in the same process.

• Why is their career my problem? They know what they want; let them be proactive and approach.

The answer to these questions is the career dashboard and the VITAL framework to navigate the actual talk.

THE CAREER DASHBOARD In the journey to the career aspirations we have, we need a career dashboard, much like a data dashboard that we may have for marketing or project metrics. A career dashboard is a visual display of all the data required in a career conversation. It helps you chart your development and provides the context in a career conversation. The two parts of the career dashboard include the ‘career focus meter’ and the ‘SASO matrix’.

Career Focus Meter It is a simple tool which measures the career focus of a person on six fields.

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person towards the financial aspect of the career is both where they currently are and where they want to be. It is also a priority decision for the person. What is the order of priority of finance in their career focus?

People: It is the extent to which the person likes to work in collaboration with others and how inclusive the role is. Maybe the person likes to work with a lot of people and is comfortable in cross-functional teams. Or maybe the person is uncomfortable in such places and seeks a role that does not involve daily interaction with a large group of people. Role: It is the degree of satisfaction, pride and sense of meaningful work derived from the current role. This also looks into the roles that the person aspires to move to and what they have done towards such a move.

Work life: It is the degree of importance that work–life balance occupies in the person’s view and what their current role allows them is yet another important place of the career meter to focus on. Career Conversations

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Creativity/innovation: It is the level of importance the individual gives to new ideas, creativity and innovation and to explore the degree of freedom allowed in their role. Some people thrive on new ideas and find repeat work stagnant. Some find comfort in repeat work. This is a very important career focus point which gets missed as roles are always mapped for the organization and not the individual. Autonomy/leadership: It is the need for a high degree of freedom and control over the job. Such individuals often leave perfect jobs in search of being an entrepreneur. Developing intrapreneurship in such minds would shape the future of your business. The career focus meter could be used as a tool during the conversation to map where the person is and where they want to be. It shows the aspirations as well as the current situation. Combined with the four elements of strengths, aspirations, skills and opportunities (SASO) matrix, the career conversation takes a transformative angle.

The SASO Matrix When looking into the career of a team member, there are many areas that lie outside the boundaries of the performance already shown. •

What are the innate strengths of the person? Do they work from a place of strength in their current role?

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What do they aspire towards? What are their dreams?

• What kind of skills do they have or are trying to learn to move towards their aspirations? • What opportunities are currently present in the organization that they could tap into? Based on these questions is the SASO matrix. 216

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Strengths Strengths refer to a more virtuous and moral component and are not simply talent or skill. Martin Seligman defines strengths as ‘the psychological ingredients—processes or mechanisms—that define the virtues’. Put it simply, think about what you are good at, what energizes you and what your contribution is. The place where your talent, energy and action meet is your strength. Map your strengths in the SASO matrix.

Aspirations Aspirations are what we want to do or who we want to become. It is the future-looking dreams and goals that we one day want to achieve. Aligning individual aspirations to organizational opportunities is the biggest task of a career conversation.

Skills Skills are the more talent-based, actionable part of the strength. The skills here also refer to the degree of commitment an individual shows to their strength and aspirations. In the current scenario of continuous learning, when people learn, acquire and develop new skills towards their aspirations, we see commitment. It is easy to match opportunity when individual skills are noticed. In the absence of a career conversation, these skills may go unnoticed and that becomes dangerous to the organization.

Opportunities How can we match the person’s aspirations with the opportunities in the organization is the premise of opportunities. In a career conversation, this step shows the interest and commitment of the team and organization. Career Conversations

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Whether the conversations are lengthy and formal in a meeting style or short, iterative chats over a period of time, using the above two tools, a career conversation becomes more meaningful for both the team and the employee. Let us consider using the career dashboard and the VITAL framework in a conversation with the candidate in the story above. Let us assume that Rishab uses the above tools. Visualizing the career journey that Karthik (the candidate) may want to take, Rishab uses the conversation map. He knows the opportunities in the organization and is searching for people who fit right into these roles. His current reality, however, is Karthik, about whom the performance report has said that he is an outstanding member of the team. The head of R&D has also mentioned potential for growth. From Rishab’s side, he has no idea about what Karthik wants or what his aspirations are. The unknown and the fact that his boss has not had the conversations are the biggest derailers to his conversation map.

In this first step, Rishab visualizes the conversation taking place and identifies the gaps in information. This creates the sense of how to set the conversation and invite Karthik for a deeper chat. Inviting Karthik to explore his career options is the biggest step in this conversation. If Rishab is able to create clear context and invitation, then the conversation would easily move forward. What about Karthik did the consultant Bala know that Rishab did not know? How can we ensure that Rishab always knows his people like the way the consultant knows his potential candidates?

Inviting Karthik to a talk about his career aspirations, Rishab decides to lead with curiosity. Scheduling a session to understand Karthik’s experience, aspirations and insights, Rishab uses very powerful questions. First, he put aside performance to ask the following: • • 218

What were the best parts of the last quarter?

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In which parts did you find yourself stretched? How do you feel about it? What would you want to do more of ?

Karthik was pleasantly surprised to hear the genuine interest in Rishab’s questions. He slowly opened up to share his honest answers. Rishab now had the career focus meter filled with leading questions to which Karthik was too happy to answer. Karthik found leadership and autonomy as the most important focus, and his current job did not give him the possibilities to explore.

At this point, it would be easy for Rishab to talk about the vacancy, but that would be a premature action on his part. So he decided to push on. As Karthik warmed up to the conversation, it would now be possible to move to deeper levels of dialogue. ‘Transformation in the conversation chrysalis’ is about Rishab and Karthik having clarity on the strengths and aspirations of Karthik, the skill-level commitment that he has shown and the opportunity-level commitment that Rishab could bring in.

The SASO matrix is a great tool to bring into the conversation chrysalis. Together they discussed the areas that Karthik was always good at and what he was known for. His performance report and his boss’ notes showed that Karthik’s strongest point was data analysis in research. However, when Rishab probed on what energizes him and the best contributions he wants to do, Karthik did not mention analysis or crunching data. Probing further, Rishab realized that data analysis was a skill and talent that Karthik had, but he found it exhausting. He considered it more an acquired skill than a natural strength. Rishab held the space of the conversation chrysalis by being in the moment and allowing the dynamics of Karthik to emerge. In the similar fashion, they found out Karthik’s aspirations to helm leadership roles and found out that Karthik had a lot of plans in mind. Career Conversations

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At this point, again Rishab held back from opening opportunities to delve deeper into understanding why Karthik did not come out with these plans and lead his boss to suggest his name for such roles? Challenging the assumptions that Karthik had about the situation, he found out a few truths about himself as well. Karthik understood that he was trying to expand into a bigger role using the skills he now had, and his aspirational role required more interpersonal and emotional connectedness.

As a last step, Rishab placed a few opportunities which were available in the organization and what they could do together. Karthik saw his options and his current position with so much clarity and also realized that he needed to take more responsibility towards his personal career development. Once such deep conversations occur, they trigger the action steps naturally. Very quickly they wrapped up the action steps with four clarity points: time, role, process and resource.

In the next few weeks, Karthik applied for the post of R&D head for the new business and also signed up with a coach to improve his engagement and leadership skills. He spoke with his team and implemented some of the ideas he had in his mind already. Rishab decided to relook into his talent–performance review system and decided to include a series of career conversations as part of the individual development plan for all employees. The career dashboard, of course, played a prominent role in the plan. In double-loop learning, there are lessons for both Rishab and Karthik.

Karthik now understood that he was working only on the first loop, that of the action not taking place. He was not satisfied with his current role, but he did not speak up about it. He was working only on the problem and changing the nature of the problem. By learning the second loop, the conversations or the lack of it and how it affects his actions, Karthik now takes his conversations more 220

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seriously. He is now looking at the other missing conversations in his life.

Rishab has come a long way from depending on the review system to understand his people. He has completely embraced the conversations which bring about such career actions. He is now working these conversations into the individual development plan of his people.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION •

Visualize a possible conversation map before you start.

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Understand the person with the SASO matrix.

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Invite your participant to explore the career focus meter.

• Hold the conversation chrysalis by isolating limiting assumptions and strengthening commitments. • Align the aspirations and skills in the SASO matrix with opportunities in the organization. • •

Align action steps towards these opportunities.

Reflect on both the conversation and your career dashboard.

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CHAPTER 15 DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

Difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values.

Douglas Stone, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

WHAT IS A DIFFICULT CONVERSATION? Conversations which create a burn in the pit of our stomach the minute we think or hear of the phrase ‘We need to talk’ sum up the umbrella of all conversations which can be termed difficult. • These are the conversations that we dread or at least feel uneasy about. •

These are the conversations that we feel deeply about—our emotions are heavily invested in them.

• These are the conversations whose outcomes are very important to us—the stakes are high.

• These are the conversations that are likely to invoke strong negative emotions or conflict during the conversation.

In general, a difficult talk is one where we are uncomfortable because we anticipate poor outcome. And such situations are all around us.

Examples include the following:

• Confronting a colleague or a stakeholder on an issue you feel is unethical • • •

Discussing about your performance and the promotion you deserve Approaching your boss about a costly mistake Saying ‘no’ and getting others to say ‘yes’

Dealing with difficult conversations and conflicts is one of the most common and challenging aspects of the managerial role. In fact, it has been shown by Psychometrics Canada Ltd that 32 per cent of employees are involved in conflicts on a daily basis.

WHAT MAKES A CONVERSATION DIFFICULT? It is critical to note that a difficult talk becomes difficult because we make it so. No topic or person is inherently difficult to talk to.

Look into the talk kaleidoscope and think about the conversations that you found difficult. Is there a pattern—maybe speaking about a few topics, speaking to a few people or speaking in a crowd? It can be anything else too. If you find your answers, then remember that the discomfort and difficulty are a part of you. This makes finding the source and isolating the limiting causes easy.

Mostly, conversations turn difficult because of four differing lenses. The four Ps of a difficult conversation are discussed further.

The Lens of Differing Priority Differing and even conflicting interests arise due to different priorities. The common examples in an organization are the conflicts in differing priorities among various departments— production having a priority on design requirements, finance on the budget constraints and marketing on the product roll-out. Difficult Conversations

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Priorities can also be a difference in the value system. Maybe you give utmost priority to time and a few members in your team do not consider time such a sacrosanct issue. Every time a deadline approaches, the talk in the team turns accusatory.

The Lens of Differing Personality People have differing personal styles, and while working closely in a team with someone whose work style, values and personality are different from ours, it can lead to misunderstanding and conflicts.

Maybe you are an extrovert and your colleague is an extrovert. Your choice in every problem may be in influencing, persuading or coordinating, and your colleague may prefer analysis and emails. Maybe you score very high on agreeableness. And your boss, a doer, scores low. It may feel like you drew the short straw and have to always listen to him because after all personality cannot be changed. But we can change the conversation. Contrary to popularly held limiting beliefs, soft and agreeable people need not get bulldozed by their confident partners. No personality comes with the caveat of being weak. And conversations when done the VITAL way could turn these conflicts to collaboration.

The Lens of Differing People The talk kaleidoscope shows the lens of different people. It is sometimes easier to talk to a group than hold a deeper conversation with a single person. It may be easier to provide generic feedback about how the entire team performed in a meeting than sit down with one colleague and go deep into the issues of performance. Maybe your team prefers to hold a conversation to understand requirements and their role in it, but your boss prefers to give instructions over mail. It can also be that your boss prefers to call for a team meeting for everything and many in the team feel 226

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that they would be saving time by just shifting half the agenda to emails.

Different people would also mean intergenerational conflict, gender bias and deeply held cultural views. The lens of people not only holds the person but also the perceptions about the person. We hardly see an individual as just a human. He is a man, she is a woman, he is a boss, they are old, they are the young and irresponsible generation. The list is long and therein lies the difficulty in the conversation.

The Lens of Differing Past Experience We are in many ways the proverbial Pavlovian dog in our conditioning to stimulus. Repeated behaviours of what worked in the past and staying away from negative stimulus are common. This is a trait we carry in our conversations also. If a conversation in the past did not go well, we assume such outcomes to repeat themselves even if the next time the talk is between different people. We carry the conversations of our past and try to do a messy patchwork of all the ideas that worked in the past. And this inability to look at each talk from a fresh perspective creates the difficulty. It goes against the first talk action principle: Talk leads to action in the moment.

Even though almost all of us have negative associations towards difficult conversations, we often forget the positive effects they can have at the workplace. First, they could encourage dialogue and discussions between the various levels of the organization. Second, they offer an opportunity to openly speak about a problem or situation, enhancing the bond between the team members. Furthermore, they could strengthen collaboration by offering a chance to come up with solutions together. Lastly, challenging conversations provide an opportunity to discuss organizational values and to align employees around expectations which are explicit and clear. Thus, dealing with difficult conversations has Difficult Conversations

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numerous positive outcomes such as boosting morale, fostering collaboration and a positive work environment.

Whatever the reason a talk turns difficult, it now becomes imperative to understand how to navigate such conversations. What if you are faced with an ethical dilemma like Sudeshna is?

A DIFFICULT CONVERSATION: STORY STUDY Sudeshna Ghosh sat shocked as she listened to her manager. At first she thought that she might be mistaken and therefore repeated his sentence. ‘Akram, you are asking me to collect market research data through my college email ID?’

Sudeshna is working her summer internship at Pharma International, a pharma company with its headquarters in Bengaluru. Choosing marketing, her primary assignment for the summer was to help Akram understand decision-making strategies that hospitals, doctors and small clinics had and this meant reaching to them all to collect data. Sudeshna looked forward to the project, but now Akram wanted her to contact them through her college email ID and approach as a student.

Akram replied, ‘This way we get accurate information and it’s not exactly a lie. You are a student.’

Sudeshna was really uncomfortable with this but she simply left, nodding her head. She loved this internship and was an ambitious girl. She studied in the country’s top B-school. But Sudeshna did not want to misrepresent herself to the doctors. She decided to talk to her college professor for advice.

Professor Venkat’s reply to her dilemma was, ‘Sudeshna, technically you are still a student and your email still works. If you want, I can sign a permission letter for you. Don’t worry.’ 228

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Sudeshna was not asking permission, and her professor’s answer was not what she was looking for. So she decided to call her brother who was older to her by five years. She said, ‘I feel that those doctors have a right to be told the entire truth, especially when I am going to ask them sensitive information.’ Her brother advised, ‘Welcome to the real world, sister, and grow up. Look at it from the right perspective. You are not doing anything wrong technically, and your loyalty should be with your company. You don’t want to be known as a difficult employee. You have your whole career in front of you. Don’t shoot the mouth that feeds you. Think about it, if your college placement cell gets to know you rat on your manager, then who will give you a job tomorrow?’ Sudeshna felt that everyone was just talking to get out of a situation. No one really cared. But she also did not know what to do. Anyways, talk is just a waste, she felt.

David Bohm, the author of On Dialogue, compares such talks to superconductivity. According to his analogy, like electrons when cooled to very low temperatures act more like a coherent whole than as separate parts, our talks tend to be more engaging when the temperatures are low. Like the electrons flow around obstacles without colliding with one another, creating no resistance and very high energy, our talks also build trust and engagement in such places. At higher temperatures, however, electrons begin to act like separate parts, scattering into a random movement and losing momentum. When our talks reach higher temperatures in emotions and importance, particularly around tough issues, people tend to act more like separate, high-temperature electrons. They collide in their views and move at cross-purposes.

William Isaacs, the author of Dialogue, seeks to produce a ‘cooler’ shared environment, by refocusing on the group’s shared attention. Difficult Conversations

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He calls these environment as ‘containers’ or fields of inquiry, as they emerge as a group moves through a dialogue process.

ANALYSING THE CONVERSATION In the first instance, this may look like Sudeshna needs to ask herself if she wants to confront Akram. And if that is so, how will her career be impacted in the long run? Throughout the story, her professor and brother have all answered to this question alone.

To the reader it can also be an ethical issue. How do we confront people like Akram? Is Akram right and like Sudeshna’s brother said, is this part of growing up? Does ethical behaviour come under the unicorns, fairy dust and Santa Claus kind of magic? Does growing up and facing reality mean being silent towards unethical behaviour? Looking at the story from this angle, a rage inside us is inevitable. In true drama sense, expecting Akram to be confronted, reprimanded and even punished and Sudeshna holding the trophy of ethical values sounds wonderful.

To convert this conversation into a positive, future-looking one requires changing this lens and looking at the whole kaleidoscope. What is Sudeshna actually worried about?

She is worried about the fact that she has to ask sensitive information for her market research but in her college ID. This to her is a misrepresentation of facts. What does Akram actually want?

He wants to get honest data and fast.

WHAT MADE THIS CONVERSATION DIFFICULT? Differing Priorities Akram’s priority is to get the data. To him, the outcome is important and the means is not a priority. He does not mind bending those 230

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rules. As it is technically legal, he can get away with the loophole that Sudeshna is still a student. But Sudeshna’s priority is to think of the means as well as the outcome.

The goal for both Sudeshna and Akram is to get data. Their differences lie in their means. In her conversation, Sudeshna needs to keep in mind that the goal is not the email ID but the data.

Differing Personalities It is clear that personal styles of working are different for both Sudeshna and Akram. Akram thinks of only short-term gains, learns the quickest way to achieve and does not mind those rules bending. Sudeshna, on the other hand, is a lot more diligent, thinks long term and respects people. That is the reason she respects the people ready to share their information and consults her professor and brother. This is her strength and, in any conversation, Sudeshna should use this strength as leverage to create positive impact.

Differing People At this point, Sudeshna needs to ask herself what kind of person she wants to be? Does she want to work in an environment that supports unethical behaviour?

What assumptions is she making about Akram? About the company? And therein lies her biggest assumption. She works for a well-known company. Would the entire organization support this behaviour? What if it was just this one manager who gets details through easy methods? Understanding who the people really are will be an important step for Sudeshna.

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pharma companies asked for details. Maybe Akram felt that such bias in the behaviour of the doctors and clinics could impact the research, and therefore to protect the research, he used a different tactic.

Maybe Akram is not aware that Sudeshna feels sensitive about the issue. Maybe Sudeshna has had a previous bad experience with ethical behaviour and therefore is hyper vigilant.

APPLYING THE VITAL FRAMEWORK While preparing for a difficult conversation, we can relook into the dynamics between the elements of the conversation. In this story, both the people in the conversation want the same agenda. They just want to do it differently. That common goal is our lifeline. A conversation about our differences should begin and end with an acknowledgement of the myriad ways we are the same. Talking about our differences is urgent, exciting and even dangerous. But our commonalities appear to be so numerous as to be beside the point, part of the status quo, or so obvious that talking about them might be predictable, boring or, even worse, sentimental. It’s difficult to see with fresh eyes and appreciate the depth and span of how much we all share.

‘Visualizing the larger common agenda’, Sudeshna would be able to understand Akram’s viewpoint better. Sudeshna, at this point, could try the talk reframe (Chapter 6). Reframing the issue from what is different to what is similar will shift this conversation powerfully to the positive. Sudeshna could reframe her problem as: ‘Akram wants authentic data and does not believe the doctors will give it to him.’ This new frame now throws a few questions for her: •

Why would Akram believe that the doctors won’t share authentic data with him?

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• Is this opinion personal, based on opinions of others or a policy from Akram’s bosses?

And this is only part of the problem. The rest of the problem for Sudeshna is Akram’s solution to his problem. Can Sudeshna reframe this part? Let us remember that while reframing should resolve, it should not dilute or dissolve the issue. A few questions which can run in Sudeshna’s mind are as follows: • What made Akram resort to the solution of using college email IDs?

• Can I convince him to try the direct approach and will he allow me?

• What can I say to Akram to make him understand my viewpoint?

With these questions in mind, Sudeshna finally reframes her problem as: ‘Akram wants authentic data and does not believe the doctors will give it to him. How can I convince him to give me a chance at getting authentic data without using my college ID?’

We can see from the above visualization process that Sudeshna has managed to shift the conversation from a ‘how can someone be so unethical’ and ‘should I work in an unethical organization’ to ‘how could I convince my manager to allow me to work in way I strongly believe in’. By reframing the issue, the difficult part of the conversation has already reduced. The second important shift we see with this process is the number of questions Sudeshna has—so clearly, we see the need for understanding Akram’s viewpoint and he needs to be invited into the discussion so that Sudeshna gets a better context to present her case.

‘Inviting Akram to the conversation’ to truly understand his premise is the next step. The exploration at this point is to gather information and perspective from Akram. The most powerful Difficult Conversations

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way to invite another person to share their perspective is to ask powerful questions and then to engage in level four listening. Sudeshna, after a mental preparation, approaches Akram.

Sudeshna: I want to bring up something with you and it is not easy for me to say this. I hope you will hear me out and help us move forward. Akram nods and welcomes Sudeshna to continue.

Sudeshna: Akram, I am very happy for this opportunity to work in your team and am honoured to be part of real-time live project in market research. But I am not comfortable posing as a college student to get the details from the clinics and doctors. Can you please tell me why you feel that doctors don’t give away details to companies? I am trying to understand your viewpoint here.

It would be fantastic if Akram would just open his heart and pour in all his secrets, but he is still resistant and snaps, ‘Look Sudeshna, I am a lot more experienced than you and I am telling you that this is the only way. With one year of theoretical knowledge, please don’t try to teach me how to work my job.’

Sudeshna at this point has the option to retreat, smile politely and say, ‘Okay, Akram, let’s do it as you say’ or challenge him the ethics of his position. Both approaches will not lead Akram to open up, so she persists in her stance of exploring through questions and listening deeply. As she listens to Akram’s words, she understands that he feels angry and trapped, an indication that we are moving to the heart of the conversation. She persists. Sudeshna: I am sorry you feel that way, Akram. That was not my intention. I came here to explore options to do the research through the right channels, that’s all. Will you give me the chance to explore that angle, please? Akram thinks for a while and answers, ‘Let me share something here. Last year, we did the whole research with our sales team who met the doctors. Our results were not satisfactory. The clinics 234

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thought that we were pushing sales and maybe we will get an edge on the price negotiation, and their answers were not really detailed. That is why a group of us decided to try this year’s results with the interns.’ This is a great positive inquiry Sudeshna explores only the agenda and never once blames Akram’s choices. By keeping the issue away from personal insinuations and keeping the focus on the common agenda, she manages to invite Akram into the talk.

Sudeshna now needs to create the conversation chrysalis—a space where Akram and she could explore this conversation safely. Akram’s acceptance to enter into the conversation itself is the greatest victory in a difficult situation. By getting the invite stage right, Sudeshna has managed to pull Akram to her side and now they could explore the issue as a team—to get authentic data from the clinics. Akram and Sudeshna explored their options. A lot of back-andforth dialogue ensued, and Sudeshna managed to keep the focus on the present conversation and also followed Akram’s rhythm in the talk. By challenging the status quo and consciously making time to get curious, step back and reflect on the larger picture, it emerged that they had gaps in their information.

The success at this step is that like the issue here, most problems are not new. But tried and tested past methods may have fallen into being reasonable and can become our limiting beliefs. In this step, Akram and Sudeshna break the limiting beliefs in their process.

Slowly, their conversation moves to inquisitiveness. Now both want to look out for people who will share the alternate perspectives and fill the gaps in their case. By the end of this conversation, Sudeshna and Akram had a set of action points. They needed to find out why the doctors really did not trust the sales people. What exactly did the sales team face the last time.

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In the conversation chrysalis, Sudeshna and Akram were able to get to the root of the problem and understand it from a systemic viewpoint.

The next step here is the ‘action design’. In a difficult conversation, the action begins when people are ready to reflect on their individual stance itself. The rest are the continuation of that action. Here, both Akram and Sudeshna had reached this step and, therefore, moved to the next stage. Barriers to their goals will be convincing the doctors. Again, they needed to influence the doctors. Having defined the issues, they had the clarity of their roles in the action and decided to meet again next week. In those seven days, Sudeshna managed to speak with a lot of clinics and doctors. She asked them about their opinions, her feeling that they may not give accurate data and how this affects research and what should she change so that they will have better confidence in the process. The doctors felt that the sales people were not really engaging with them. They felt that the sales team was very transactional in their approach and hence they did not trust them.

Akram had managed a similar effort with their sales team. Together, they now understood the actual issues that the doctors had, and they could address it. Sudeshna now asked the most pertinent question: ‘Akram, what do we now know about the doctors and their feedback that could help the sales team?’

The question spurred Akram to call their sales teams to a meeting and he went on to show the results of their combined research. They presented the doctors’ viewpoints and the past actions taken by the teams. Again, they invited without blame or judgement. Soon the sales teams had ideas and the conversation moved on. What began as a difficult situation for one intern, Sudeshna, manifested itself into a transformative experience for the entire sales team. But Sudeshna had one last step in the process left—a double-loop learning from the conversations that unfolded for her. 236

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Staying curious and learning from the success and failures equally is an important lesson. The learning for Sudeshna cannot have been clearer. The chains of causality perceived only in hindsight were like the rhyme:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the knight was lost, for want of a knight the battle was lost, for want of a battle the kingdom was lost. So a kingdom was lost—all for want of a nail. —JLA: The Nail, DC Comics (1998)

In the same way,

For the lack of engagement, trust was lost. For the lack of trust, influence was lost. For the lack of influence, performance was lost. For the lack of performance, process was lost. And for the lack of process, ethics was lost.

This story emphasizes the second lesson mentioned in the introduction chapter—engagement before action, always!

Sudeshna also learnt that difficult conversations can be unpacked to transformative opportunities. In the end, every difficult conversation is a search for the truth. When we concentrate on the common threads, the differences are far easier to resolve.

With courage and practice, the process will become more natural, and you will see tough conversations as opportunities to create and build something larger. Instead of banging our heads together in a confrontation, we can now bump shoulders together to ideate, create, solve and transform.

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PAUSE FOR REFLECTION 1. Look for the similar, the common, the thread that will unite.

2. Reframe your problem to a future-focused, positive one, and invite the participant. 3. Together explore the concept through positive and powerful questioning. 4. Hold the conversation chrysalis showing empathy and level four listening. 5. The emerging ideas, away from the difficult talk, are now ready for action.

6. Quickly go through the four levels of clarity to ensure that new action happens. 7. Use the double-loop reflective learning TAR process to understand and learn.

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CHAPTER 16 E-TALK: ADAPTING THE FOUR CONVERSATIONS IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

In a world that is constantly changing, it is to our advantage to learn how to adapt and enjoy something better.

Kenneth H. Blanchard

Conventional teams are becoming a thing of the past, and virtual teams are the reigning monarchy today. The rapid development of digital technology and digitalization are changing our teams and giving organizations opportunities to accomplish new things in new ways.

‘Digitalization’ is referring to new ways to create value with the use of digital technology. For instance, doing business and building and maintaining valuable relationships with team members or stakeholders on the opposite side of the globe are no longer major challenges which require long, costly travels. Not only has digitalization made it possible to build relationships with potential suppliers or customers, but it has also given the opportunity for team members to work together, despite them being in different geographical places, and form a virtual team. A virtual team is one with members which work from different geographical locations and interact with each other through different communication technology.

Employees in different locations are on the same teams and need to collaborate and communicate across geographical boundaries, making virtual communication a necessity. Organizations are also implementing virtual teams into their daily operations to improve productivity and to keep their global structure synchronized. Today’s workplace is different from what it was a few years ago. Communication technology has throughout the years developed from simple email and bulletin boards, where no immediate interaction was possible, to today’s opportunities to share information and responding in real time through videoconferences, real-time document edits and internal communication systems. Today, workplace is a place which is meant to be somewhere to plug in for the day, regardless where this may be.

Working virtually can also be an alternative when meeting your colleagues at the office is neither possible nor recommended. The COVID-19 pandemic caused multiple major companies to keep their workers at home, dissuading them from going to the office. This forced teams to collaborate and communicate from home, using technological communication tools. The benefits of working with virtual teams are many: •

Lower costs regarding office spaces and travels

• When working in virtual teams, organization can have the most qualified workers included in the team regardless of their physical geographical location • Well managed virtual teams are in some situations alleged to outperform the conventional teams

The implementation and use of virtual teams, a crucial element in today’s digital society and evidently in times of crisis such as COVID-19 pandemic, are putting pressure on teams and their skills. The most obvious challenge is to create cohesiveness in a team which does not meet physically. The challenges in a virtual conversation can be as follows: E-Talk: Adapting the Four Conversations in Virtual Teams

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1. Functioning ‘technology’ is a prerequisite for the use of virtual teams, which without this crucial element or the recent technological development would not even exist. The advancements in information technologies are allowing teams to work separately but together. If problems with technology arise, the virtual team’s connection might be interrupted or come to a full stop. Misinterpretation of information and failure to reach all team members might be complications caused by inadequate technological connections resulting in confusion among team members and difficulties in gaining mutual knowledge and understanding. The technological tools used in a virtual team should therefore be ensured as reliable, rich and fast to avoid any issues, such as no answers from members due to insufficient connection or emails and data that mysteriously disappears . As pointed out earlier, leaders are carrying a responsibility when implementing digital tools in the organization and are thus facing a challenge in doing it in the best way.

2. To establish ‘trust’ is another challenge faced by virtual leaders. Clear and open communication provides the opportunity to build trust within a team, a key factor of the virtual team’s effectiveness. Trust within a virtual team follows from expectations and beliefs from the individuals that the other members will fulfil commitments, act with good intentions and work hard to achieve what is strived for. Teams with high degree of trust tend to be more proactive and more taskfocused and more frequently interact with each other. Also, trust can make the virtual team members more comfortable in presenting their thoughts, resulting in the exploration of new, creative ideas. Furthermore, trust is claimed to be higher among team members of virtual teams who are similar to each other in terms of, for example, culture and language. 3. The absence of visual and verbal cues, for example, body language, the pitch of someone’s voice or the true message

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behind what is being said, is a contributing factor which gives rise to ‘miscommunications’, a challenge in need to be encountered by leaders of virtual teams. Such miscommunications might give rise to conflicts within the team. The conflicts in virtual teams may be longer lasting and harder to resolve than the ones in conventional teams and may also arise easier due to the geographical distance and lack of interpersonal relationships. Even though some feelings can be mediated, using, for example, emoticons when communicating via email, it does not compensate enough for the lack of visual and verbal cues. The challenge to find substitutes to face-to-face interactions, to interpret the cues sent by team members from a distance, is unique for virtual team leaders. This one is important to encounter in order to avoid conflicts within the group that derive from negative cues, confusion and annoyance.

4. The fourth of the identified challenges in virtual teams is ‘goal alignment’. A mutual understanding of the team’s goals might be challenged by the geographical distance and best reduced by communication. When goal orientation within a team is not aligned, the members will have different views of the purpose of a given task. Also, when goal alignment is not achieved, there is a risk that the team members will not approach the task in similar ways.

5. The fifth and final challenge in a virtual conversation is the distraction provided by multitasking, multi-window working. This reduces the chances of deeper listening and therefore can create conversation in the shallower information exchange zone itself. The convenience of being able to communicate with each other at all times from different locations might in some situations lead to an increased amount of stress for the team members. Being always ‘available’ or the commonly used term ‘death by videoconferencing’ are common stress elements to the virtual team culture. E-Talk: Adapting the Four Conversations in Virtual Teams

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Conversations in virtual teams take more effort than in conventional teams, which also make the communication less frequent. Further, communication effectiveness depends on what channel is chosen for the message for it to be clearly understood by the group, and it has been suggested that the leader should be responsible to set the tone in the communication.

VITAL FRAMEWORK IN A VIRTUAL TEAM Adapting the VITAL framework to the virtual environment requires a change in how we look at the challenges. For instance, trust is still built only among humans, but difficulty is due to the lack of human face-to-face interaction. Therefore, the biggest focus on adapting a conversation framework to the virtual world will be: ‘How can we retain the elements of human emotions like trust and engagement in an environment ruled by technology?’

‘Visualizing’ the conversation is the first step. In a traditional conversation, this step involved becoming aware of the intentions, context and purpose of the talk. In a virtual conversation, the added element of technology should also be visualized. This includes becoming aware of the alternate technological mediums available to us to run the same conversation and visualizing its effectiveness. What is the best medium for the message to be delivered? Email, phone, video call? What is the level of interaction that the conversation requires? Does the medium provide this level of interaction? Visualizing requires us to now focus on interactive conversation, from both people side and technology side. When done well, the conversation will have lesser possibility of miscommunication.

‘Invite’ is the stage that sets the context and common ground. While in a virtual conversation, we have the advantage of inviting participants earlier. Share pre-conversation materials ahead of time, set an agenda and ensure that all information to create common ground are shared prior to the actual talk. This way, we 244

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can pre-empt the commitment to action in the invite stage itself in a virtual conversation. The creation of a common ground, at least with information sharing, provides a better foundation for trust to develop. ‘Transforming to conversation chrysalis’ needs the creation of a safe space. This is the biggest challenge in the virtual conversations, as absence of a physical presence creates the gap in communication through expressions and body language.

The foundations of effective and engaging virtual conversations emerge from the tremendously diverse range of approaches and platforms which form the virtual ecosystem today. The cohesive engagement is still the heart of the conversation, whether physical or virtual. It is when we have safety, connection and trust present in the conference call that we can truly proceed to the conversation chrysalis.

In a virtual conversation, helping people connect early to their purpose or WIIFM—What’s In It For Me—helps build trust and engagement. This connection point mitigates against the challenge of distraction through multitasking and keeps listening higher. Some considerations in creating the conversation chrysalis virtually can be as follows: 1. Inclusive ways of working

2. Ensuring privacy as per requirements

3. Ensuring there is an interactive chat window to replace the corridors and hallways in our offices

4. Inclusive space for variances in comfort levels, language, time zones, culture, etc. 5. Establishing transparency in conversations and rotating the mike to ensure participation

‘Action design’ in a virtual conversation is easy on the skill and difficult on the commitment. Leveraging various technological tools in planning, implementation, team connection, sharing and E-Talk: Adapting the Four Conversations in Virtual Teams

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chatting, and the support system to the action plans are easier in a virtual ecosystem. The sense of anonymity and dispersed team creates the block in commitment. Ensuring that the role and process clarity steps in the goal-setting stage are done well and the interactive element during the conversation is maintained, the barriers to action can be mitigated.

The last part, ‘learning in reflection’ is a continuous process in virtual conversation with regard to people, process, goals, actual conversation and use of technology. As is seen in the virtual adaptation of VITAL framework table, the elements of the conversation can be successfully adapted to a virtual ecosystem and even leveraged for better results than face to face in a few areas. VITAL

Conventional Teams

Visualize

When conversations are first visualized, we become aware of our intentions, context and purpose of the talk. As individuals, teams or organizations, are you visualizing your talks and preparing for it first? And importantly, are you supporting your team in their internal conversation?

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An invitation in a talk sets the context. It defines the scope. An invite also shows that you care about the collective ideas. This step specifically looks at distinguishing between the elements in a conversation— initiator, participant and topic/problem.

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Virtual Team Adaptation

Visualize the elements of technology and its challenges. Prepare for smoother execution.

Invite participants and topics ahead. Share materials and information prior to the call. Create a common ground quickly.

VITAL

Conventional Teams

Transform to conversation chrysalis

For deeper, generative conversations, a safe space needs to be created and held by all the participants. This is the conversation chrysalis—a space where individuals can come in with the unique thoughts and speak without being judged.

Action design

The central outcome of any good conversation is action. The three steps of identifying goals, integrating commitment and accountability, and establishing support form the backbone of action.

Learning in reflection

Learning is itself a form of evolution, and although sometimes it’s hard to believe, our conversations are changing for the better. Learning in reflection is a conscious and deliberate process of reflecting on the conversation and action. This step introduces the TAR cycle.

Virtual Team Adaptation

Ensure inclusive ways of working. Ensure privacy as per requirements. Ensure that there is an interactive chat window to replace the corridors and hallways in your offices. Ensure inclusive space for variances in comfort levels, language, time zones, culture, etc. Establish transparency in conversations and rotating the mike to ensure participation. Leverage the various technological tools in planning, implementation, team connection, sharing and chatting.

Deliberate on the elements of technology and how it helped or hindered the conversation. In TAR, the analysis of the virtual element forms a major learning in the second loop.

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IN YOUR CONVERSATIONS… We have come to the conclusion of this book, but your journey begins from here. If you are wondering where to start, it does not matter. Start anywhere, start small and see the magic unfolding in your relationships, performance, influence or engagement. The beauty about conversations is that it is a part of a systemic whole, and small changes even within ourselves can ripple out big differences.

A simple positive observation can refocus a discussion, a simple smile can begin a relationship, listening can bring comfort when there are no words to say and focusing on the similarities can create better inclusion in a difficult situation. You choose to start anywhere, today. Pick any one of the following actions today: •

Use the talk kaleidoscope to understand where your conversations are at this moment. Which ones are to be celebrated and which ones need a bit of help and support?

• Create a career dashboard for yourself or for your entire team and figure out how you want to move forward. •

•

Dedicate the next month into creating agendaless engaging conversations with your team members. Rope in the whole team if you can.

Schedule your next call to influence someone after working your influence triangle.

• Approach that one conversation you have been putting off today. Be courageous, use the framework and observe the results. •

Apply the learning to build magnificence in others.

Even if you could put in a small effort in a few of your conversations today, you will be able to see the changes. Your team will grow. As you do make these changes in your conversations, my question to you is: Are they working for you? 248

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If you have a success story to share or if something does not work for you, please write to me. You could email me at Latha (at) drlathavijaybaskar (dot) com.

Plus, whenever you are ready, here are three more ways to help you and your team grow to positive conversational catalysts in your life and business. The talk action tribe: Learning can be fun, and a lot more can be learnt from the stories of others. Join our Facebook group ‘Talk Action Tribe’ to practise and explore the concepts of talk action with many others.

Download your personal toolset—the talk kaleidoscope, your career dashboard with the career focus meter and SASO matrix, your influence triangle, your team engagement–performance matrix or your personal VITAL map from www.drlathavijaybaskar. com/talkaction. Reach out to me or email me for a complimentary coaching session to master the conversation side of your life and business. And,

Thank You!

I began my journey as a conversation catalyst, coaching individuals and teams with the vision that talk is the foundation on which change is built. My desire has always been to make every ‘talk’ into transformative ‘action’. By reading this book and every time you motivate yourself to have a deeper conversation with the belief that it will be the foundation to action, you make my vision come true. Thank you!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Latha Vijaybaskar, an ICF-certified coach, facilitator and author, catalyses individuals and teams to navigate the conversation side of business.

VITAL Conversations is a result of 10 years of research on conversations as the cornerstone to action. Working with Latha, people learn to build trust, hold difficult conversations, manage conflict, guarantee psychological safety in their interaction and achieve gargantuan performance through collaborative efforts in life and business.

Latha brings along almost 18 years of experience in training and teaching, working across corporate, education and social sectors. She has coached, trained and taught over 2,000 millennial leaders in real estate, IT, financial sector, retail and academia.
In colleges, Latha handles subjects related to organizational behaviour, leadership and business communication. Her approach is based on exhaustive research in positive psychology, organizational communication, appreciative inquiry and coaching conversations. Her accumulated credentials include the ICF-accredited ACC, PhD in management with her thesis on positive organizational communication, MBA, masters in psychology and MPhil in organizational communication. Her first two books, 21 Difficult Conversations: Tools to Navigate Your Most Important Talk and Master Exactly What to Say and Masterstrokes: Reinventing Leadership in Uncertain Times, are both Amazon bestsellers. To connect, influence and lead inside the transforming space of a conversation, reach out to Latha at www.drlathavijaybaskar.com.

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