Effective communication is essential to the development of successful business initiatives and organizational change. This TMA World Viewpoint outlines some behaviours and techniques that managers should be encouraged to adopt and avoid to promote the use of powerful conversations.

1. The Critical
Art of
Conversation
TMA World
Viewpoint

2. The Critical Art of Conversation
The café is abuzz with conversations - some between
family, some between friends and others between
colleagues or potential business partners.
Some are quiet and intimate, while others are closer to
a form of battle.
The latter reminded me of a conversation I observed in
a global diversity seminar that I had facilitated the day
before.

3. The Critical Art of Conversation
I hadn’t given the The conversation started relatively slowly with
participants in the people feeling out each other’s positions on the topic
and trying hard to be polite, but then it quickly
conversation any
morphed into a passionate debate.
guidelines on
how to behave. The speed with which people adopted positions and
“Just be yourselves,” fought for them was staggering.
I said.
Gone was my advice of the day before –
first, listen to understand, think and then
speak.

4. The Critical Art of Conversation
No one was listening, people were talking over one
another to try and shut others down and win the
argument.
Positions were being misrepresented in order to
score points.
People stubbornly dug themselves into a rhetorical
hole that they couldn’t get out of without appearing
to lose face.
I had said nothing about debating or arguing,
I had just asked them to hold a conversation about
a work-related topic.

5. The Critical Art of Conversation
The linguist Deborah Tannen calls the conversational climate in which we live today the
‘Argument Culture’ and I couldn’t agree more with her descriptor.
This culture assumes that opposition is always the best way to get things done or to arrive
at the ‘truth’.
It encourages an adversarial mindset
in which views are polarized and
fought for and active thinking can
only be demonstrated by offering a
critique.

6. The Critical Art of Conversation
You only to switch on CNN to witness the argument culture in action - find people with
opposing viewpoints, put them together on the same broadcast and let them fight it out.
The person who can grab the most air
time and speak over the other person
the most and the loudest, wins.
People aren’t invited on the programs to
listen, to examine assumptions, to learn from
each other and think through solutions
together, that wouldn’t be attention-grabbing
enough.
However, it’s so important to the quality
of our public policies and our business
solutions.

7. The Critical Art of Conversation
In terms of leadership and management development, we must place a high priority
on conversational competence.
In getting things done through other people we need to spend considerable amounts of
time in talking.
There is more than one way to converse with others, but many professionals get stuck in
their talk-habits.
Business professionals need to have conversational options that they can apply
depending on the context and objective.
Closed Transactional
Exploring
Consulting
Arguing
Telling
Open Transformational

8. The Critical Art of Conversation
Conversation can be placed along a spectrum from One-Way Telling (Closed) to Two-
Way Exploring (Open).
Along this spectrum are various options, the usefulness of which will depend on the
situation and the need.
Conversational options at the closed-end tend to be transactional (information exchange)
while those at the open-end have the potential for being transformational (shifts in
mindsets, mental models and underlying assumptions).
Closed Transactional
Exploring
Consulting
Arguing
Telling
Open Transformational

9. The Critical Art of Conversation
Exploring is a learning conversation (also referred to
as dialogue) and tends to be underused.
Its primary aim is the creative uncovering and
examination of deeply held assumptions, values,
beliefs and mental models that shape the way we
see and act in the world.
Once uncovered and understood, breakthrough
thinking becomes possible.

10. The Critical Art of Conversation
What are some of the behaviours
and techniques you should
encourage your managers to adopt
or avoid to promote greater use of
the learning conversation?

11. The Critical Art of Conversation
ADOPT  AVOID
Asking open-ended questions A win-lose mindset
Being objective A ‘one right answer’ mentality
Building on others’ ideas Being evasive
Identifying and examining all assumptions, Blocking comments like “That won’t work
including one’s own here”
Listening to interpret meaning accurately Listening only to find faults
Misconstruing the other person’s ideas to
Not trying to reach conclusions too quickly
suit your own purpose
Staying focused on the goal of mutual Reacting too often with the “Yes, but...”
understanding and learning response
Suspending judgment Wanting quick and easy explanations

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enquiries@tmaworld.com
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