Continual innovation #3: extra strength conversations
This article is about how to create extra strength conversations that enable more diverse, more inclusive, more equitable and ultimately far more effective knowledge sharing. It was written by Perspectiv’s Andy Wilkins and Master’s in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership Alumni, Anne Maria Aydin.
Enabling diverse, inclusive, and equitable extra strength conversations
Extra strength conversations are where one learns a lot in contrast to other types of conversation such as debate and discussion where one does not learn much. With debate, the emphasis is about ‘winning’ and with discussion, the aim is ‘knocking down’ the other person’s perspective. Xstrength conversations (sometimes also referred to as dialogue) are really useful for learning in formal settings such as education and at work, as well as informal ones at home with family or friends.
Xstrength conversations are not a new fad, though. Interacting well with others has been around since the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in ancient Greece. Known as ‘koinonia’, the spirit of fellowship is about acknowledging the enormous potential of collaboration to enable thinking independently together. More recently, people such as Einstein, Bohr, and Pauli when working with colleagues also used xstrength conversations.
Although very difficult to literally translate, the Japanese concept of ‘Ba’ from Ikujiro Nonaka also describes an ‘enabling context’ that supports learning and creativity. Ba combines ‘place + time + people’ in a dynamic that enables the creation of a favourable environment.
Xstrength conversations enable people to be involved, to contribute, and to challenge – especially more senior (in a hierarchy sense). Feeling safe expressing your opinions, sharing knowledge or thoughts with other people and reflecting in a group to reach shared understanding is when people truly co-create newness.
The challenge in todays ‘insta’ world is that conversations take time to prepare for and happen. To actually understand what someone means, we need to understand the person, their context, and their frame of mind. Xstrength conversations often involve sharing assumptions to try and reach shared understanding.
Why do we need xstrength conversations?
In today’s world, with ever increasing technology, deep and meaningful conversations can seem ‘old fashioned’ and the paradox is that whilst xstrength conversations take a long time, everything else takes longer.
Lots of companies invest in incredibly expensive technical knowledge management systems where they attempt to capture the knowledge living within their companies but unfortunately by definition, you cannot easily codify and computerise tacit knowledge.
When we engage in dialogic conversations with other people we get an opportunity to explore and experiment with new thoughts, ideas, and words. And more than ever we need to be having these constructive xstrength conversations. Have you noticed people tend to fight and defend their thoughts and positions and talk much more than they listen?
From an early age we are taught to prepare ourselves to speak and defend our point of view but rarely taught to listen. Leaders and managers pressurised by today’s need for competitive turnaround frequently apply ‘band-aid’ solutions which address the symptoms but not the cause. They often forget, or ignore, or cover up a significant problem inherent in any group of people working together – the people themselves. This is a very inconvenient truth.
Socrates used to explain the art of conversation as a ‘spirit of fellowship’ where participants were encouraged to establish dialogue by exchanging ideas, not to argue but to listen carefully, to engage in clarification of one’s thinking and to be honest – this demands politeness and courage.
Yet in business and society we appear to often be having conversations which are full of hidden agendas, issues, spin, intimidation and power games, and unquestioned advocacy. Businesses often focus on the wrong incentives, and at times unintentionally create hyper-competitive work environments where trust is low, which makes sharing tacit knowledge difficult.
The more competitive an organisation is, the more value and power ‘information’ will have. Translated this means people will tend to share less and ask less with each other. Controlling the information that others need to accomplish something becomes power.
For knowledge sharing this is unhelpful because ‘warm data’ is not an easily definable subject and its value harder to quantify at first. Environments like this will likely experience a drop in knowledge sharing throughout the organisation.
The five main signs of organisations that are ‘blind’ to xstrength conversations:
Individuals work efficiently in their own silos but block high performance by refusal or avoidance of genuine cooperation.
Territorial posturing in teams, departments and even in the boardroom impedes progress and productivity. Relationships worsen as people harden into opposing positions, each side advocating its own solution, unwilling to consider alternatives.
Defensive mindsets in a team or department create resistance. Decisions are made based on power and political manoeuvring rather than intelligence and insight.
There is little need to improve, raise the bar, to move beyond ‘okay’ and head towards higher performance.
An inability to progressing wicked, complex problems. Organisations often waste considerable resources by working to solve the wrong problems because of a reluctance to accept the complexity of many challenges.
If people don’t move from debate to dialogic xstrength conversations, many challenges or issues remain unaddressed. When people stay in debate and defend, they will never be truly open to listening and understanding what is going on. A healthy and effective alternative to this defensive approach to problem-solving is to use xstrength conversations.
Who is responsible for effective xstrength conversations?
Most of us will have tried to be part of or have contributed to unproductive conversations. They are conversations that do not lead to anything, make someone feel uncomfortable, or result in the exact opposite of what was originally intended.
You may ask yourself who’s job is it to manage the conversation process? Is it the leader? Team leader? Manager? It is easy to say that someone else is at fault for a bad conversation we experience, however the truth is we can all do better most of the time or help encourage more productive conversations. The role of managing conversations can be the one of senior managers or staff at any level. The truth is once we enter into conversations we have choices of what approach we take, the direction we take the conversation and how we choose to respond to the input we experience from people involved.
As participants of information exchange we have options. We can choose to encourage dialogic xstrength conversations which reveal the true nature, depth and diversity of a situation by enabling all the different and varied perspectives to be heard. We do this by fostering a safe environment that encourages openness and discourages both types of defensiveness: ‘fight’ – aggression, attack, blame; and ‘flight’ – withdrawal, silent resistance, compliance.
How to enable xstrength conversations?
When a person works alone on a task they can focus 100% on the task itself. When individuals have to work together on a problem, two problems now exist – the initial task and the second problem of working together. The more complex the task and the larger the number of people working together the more potential there is for misunderstanding, confusion, miscommunication and assumption building which leads to resentment, frustration and turns any positive potential for healthy debate and differences of opinion into conflict.
The process of dialogue for xstrength conversations enables a group of people to move beyond just ‘talking’ to new means of listening and responding to each other that provides in-depth insights for individuals on the impact they themselves have on the issue, and increases their awareness of the real opinions, attitudes and behaviours of the other people involved.
Xstrength conversations diagnose the cause – ‘get to the heart of the matter’, ‘dig below the surface’, ‘get under the bonnet/hood’ – because only when the ‘root causes’ have started to reveal themselves, can authentic, potentially sustainable, and targeted ways forward be found, developed, and implemented.
Once we enter into an xstrength conversation we need to be bound by an invisible psychological contract which states that we take responsibility for how the conversation goes. In simple terms we need to ‘care’ – care about the other person or people; care about the attitude you project; care about the environment you create; care about the process; and care about the words you use. To care well, people need to be able to listen, be open, defer judgement, be vulnerable and courageous, and deeply value mutual trust. Care in business is not often discussed as it’s most likely seen as something fluffy or non-specific – but it’s exactly this dehumanising approach which causes issues in today’s workplace.
| Mutual Trust | Active Empathy | Access to Help | Lenience in Judgement | Courage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Ask yourself how often we truly care, care about the opinions, views or knowledge of others? Listen twice as much as we speak could be the mantra, but the reality is often the opposite.
In organisations where caring is authentic, there will automatically be room for trial and error – people will defer judgement, allowing people to talk through unfinished ideas, loose concepts and even expression of emotions. The knowledge generating process requires space, time, and support. Being able to manage conversation does require some level of experience but basic principles are easy to learn. A good starting point is to be able to step away from negative responses and shift to a more neutral response.
Imagine a scenario: your colleague tells you about an idea for solving a current issue. In the first instance you think the idea won’t work and you can think of more than one limitation with it in its current form. Often, we might want to immediately respond with “I don’t think this would work, because of…” However, instead you could say “that sounds interesting, how would this work in this scenario… or “how might we develop the idea to impact …” By answering with questions you 1) show you listened; you care, 2) you engage positively in the dialogue by deferring judgement and most importantly, 3) you show humility e.g. you assume you might not know everything.
Humility is a courageous and honest act – we have to admit that we don't have the answer and that we need more insight or information, or worse still that the answer we have might be wrong.
This kind of humility is rare in competitive, embattled organisations and communities, but it is what we need to engage in better dialogues and thereby find proper solutions. One wise educator put it this way: "Humility is admitting that I don't know the whole story. Compassion is recognising that you don't know it either."
Humility, caring, and compassion can help lead us out of our bunkers to open ground, where we step away from the rigidity of our positions and become more curious. We need to be open to the possibility that colleagues and even strangers have information and perspectives that may be of value to us. Only with their input do we stand a chance of seeing a situation in all its complexity. Every perspective, prejudice, and opinion offer more information. When talking about organisational innovation, potential different positions, and diverse thinking will allow us to see the situation more fully and find better ways forward.
Conclusion
The hassle with xstrength conversations is that they are dependent on the context of a situation, the people involved and their background, values and behaviours. No one situation is the same.
As humans, we defend ourselves if we feel attacked, therefore xstrength conversations are dependent on high levels of trust – we need to trust that what we say won’t get judged and that we have the opportunity to change our mind during a conversation. In any conversation all participants have an opportunity to learn, but to do so we sometimes need help to clear our thoughts, express ideas and connect the dots. This can entail saying things which might not initially make sense, or might be offensive to someone. Responses to such situations should be more questions, more dialogue.
There are topics which are so personal that we might never agree with someone else. And that is fine – Ellen DeGeneres was once questioned about her friendship to George Bush and her reply was that she is friends with lots of people who she does not agree with, people with different political views than herself, people of different cultures and so on. Kindness and acceptance are not solely depended on agreeing with someone else or being their equal. It’s about the kindness and acceptance and respect we show to each other across differences. It takes courage to defer judgement, to seek advice, to learn new things and it takes trust, empathy and reflection to truly understand someone else.
To move from debate and conflict to xstrength dialogic conversations, we need to be curious – curious about other people and their thinking. Start by practicing next time you are at work – make it a rule not to make all your comments positive or negative, try and shift to neutral. Instead of: “I don’t think this would work, I cannot see this happening because of so and so…” or “that’s great” (although you don’t really mean it), try instead: “that’s an interesting perspective, tell me more about it…” or “that’s unique, tell me more about how you came to that… ”
In Article 4, we share examples of the principles in these articles in practice, as well as some tools that have a high impact in shifting to neutral when used skilfully.