Conversation

Conversation – The Heart Of Communication

When we converse with someone, we tend to take it for granted. After all, we have been talking to people all our lives. But not many of us realize that holding an effective conversation is an art. There are many factors that govern the conversation between individuals.

This presentation is a tutorial based on excerpts from the book “Improve your Communication Skills” by Alan Barker.

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Presentation Transcript

Slide 1: Conversation – The Heart of Communication A Presentation by Rajiv Bajaj

Slide 2: Primary Management Tool It is how we – – Plan Our Lives Organise our Work – Build Relationships – Create Understanding – Understand Feelings Actions – Influence Others – Are Influenced by Others – Solve Problems Cooperate with each other.

Slide 3: Conversation – It’s how we Create New Opportunities.

Slide 4: Conversation is….. A verbal dance… Derives from the Latin – ‘To move around with’ Like a dance it has rules standard moves… Rules that allow people to move together in harmony without stepping on each other’s toes or getting out of step.

Slide 5: Different Conversations .. Different Conventions… Some are understood implicitly While others must be spelt out or rehearsed.

Slide 6: Talking Listening.. People conversing are not only talking but also listening Without listening there is NO conversation Both activities happen simultaneously Each participant is both a speaker as well as a listener Conversation – A Dynamic of..

Slide 7: Listening… .. is the way we find out what the other person means and how they think .. indicates what move to make .. is the way to find common ground – the shared understanding that we seek Remember No Listening = No conversation.

Slide 8: Reminder No Listening slide = No conversation.

Slide 9: Peter Senge – The Fifth Discipline – 1993 Talking Advocacy : The way we advocate our point of view ideas thinking Listening Enquiry : How we enquire into the other person’s point of view ideas thinking Adversarial Conversations Pure Advocacy. We only advocate and do not enquire. Conflicts Only Enquiry No Advocacy Unsatisfactory outcome or no outcome at all.

Slide 10: The best conversations balance Advocacy Enquiry. They are a rich mix of talking and listening of stating views and asking questions. CONVERSATION Advocacy Enquiry.

Slide 11: Why do conversations go wrong Difficult to analyse. . Because they are so subtle Because they happen so fast Because we are not trained in the art of effective conversation. Because it is a life skill that we are expected to pick up as we go along.

Slide 12: Broadly speaking there are FOUR major reasons: 1. Context 2. Relationship 3. Structure 4. Behaviour These are the FOUR DIMENSIONS of any Conversation Why do conversations fail..

Slide 13: Putting in Context – ALL conversations have a context – they happen for a reason Form part of a larger conversation: they are a part of a process or a developing relationship They fail because one or both or all of us ignore the context If we don’t check for understanding why the conversation is happening we begin to misunderstand.

Slide 14: We fail to put things in Context because we… – Don’t give sufficient time to the conversation – Hold the conversation at the wrong time – Converse in an uncomfortable busy or noisy place – Have lack of privacy – Are distracted.

Slide 15: We ALSO fail because we bring assumptions into the conversation and if we leave them unquestioned misunderstanding conflict can quickly arise.

Slide 16: We might Assume that : – We both know what we are talking about – We need to agree – We know how the other person views the situation – We shouldn’t let our feeling show – The other person is somehow to blame – We can be brutally honest – We need to solve the other person’s problem – We’re right and they’re wrong.

Slide 17: Assumptions derive from our opinions of what is true or about what we – or others – should do We bring mental models to the conversations – our perceptions of how things are Millions of mental models shape and drive our thinking constantly – we can’t think without them Thinking is the process of forming and changing our mental models Often conversations become conflicts between mental models – they become adversarial.

Slide 18: Key Factors – Context Objectives – Do you really know why you are holding the conversation Time – Is this the right time What is the history behind the conversation Is it part of a larger process Place – Comfortable Quiet No Distractions Assumptions – Do both understand what are the underlying assumptions you are starting from? Do you need to explore them further?

Slide 19: Working out the Relationship – Relationships define limits potential of our conversation – different levels of conversation with strangers and close acquaintances Difficult relationships cause us to speak in codes Conversations are ways of establishing fixing or changing a relationship Relationships are neither fixed nor permanent – they are dynamic.

Slide 20: The Dimensions of Relationship – Relationships operate along several dimensions Some of these are : Status Power Roles Liking All these factors help to define the territory of the conversation – the “Do not Cross” line.

Slide 21: Status – Status is the rank that we grant to the other person in relation to us. We see ourselves as simply higher or lower in status to the other person – We confer this status. Evident in the degree of respect familiarity or reserve we grant them. We derive our own sense of status from the status that we give the other person.

Slide 22: Status Feel Lower – Total Agreement Suppression of our own strongly held ideas. Status – Feel Higher -Tendency to discount / Put-Down / Interrupt / Ignore. Behaviours – Ways of establishing or altering our status in a relationship. Status is always at risk as it is created through the other person’s perception – can be destroyed or diminished in a moment – downgrading a person’s status is a powerful tool for exerting authority.

Slide 23: Power – Control we exert over others Influence or control people’s behaviour in any way. John French Bertram Raven : Studies in Social Behaviour – 1959 – Five kinds of Power Bases – 1. Reward Power – Ability to grant favours 2. Coercive Power – Ability to punish 3. Legitimate Power – Conferred by law or rules 4. Referent Power – The Charisma that causes others to imitate or idolise 5. Expert Power – Deriving from specific skills.

Slide 24: Referent Power most effective. Conversations can become paralysed as one of us becomes overpowered by other’s Charisma Conversations often fail as they become power struggles People tend to exercise different kinds of power at different points in same conversation. Little Reward Power Use Expert Power Lack Charisma Use Legitimate or Coercive Power.

Slide 25: Seduction is another way Power afflicts conversation. We end up doing something we hadn’t intended – we get tempted or attracted We get seduced away from our intended context to the other person’s area of interest Conversational seduction – like other kinds of seduction – usually happens because it is pleasurable However frequently end up discussing matters of little importance – fail to achieve our goals.

Slide 26: Role Set of Behaviours people expect from us. Formal Role Explicitly Defined Job description Informal Role Conferred on us as a result of people’s experience of our conversations We tend to converse with each other in our roles Conversations may fail if our roles our unclear or are in a conflict.

Slide 27: Example – Formal Role Accountant / Sales Supervisor / HR Executive etc Informal Role Devil’s Advocate / Mediator / Clown. Conversations that result will tend to be limited by the perceived roles that are operating. Meredith Belbin’s list of Team Roles: Chair or Coordinator / Shaper or Leader / Innovator or Creative Thinker / Monitor or Critical Thinker / Worker or Implementer / Team worker or builder / Finisher or Detail Checker / Resource researcher outside team / Expert.

Slide 28: Liking – Conversations may fail because we dislike the other person. Can also go wrong because we like each other a lot. We may dislike or like someone for many reasons. Liking possible emotional entanglement or even a personal relationship. Dislike Power-play or a half-coded game of tit- for-tat These 4 factors effect territorial relationship.

Slide 29: A successful conversation seeks out the shared territory – the common ground between us But we guard our own territory very carefully Resultantly many conversation rules are about how we seek give permission for entering each other’s territory We often tiptoe around borders of an issue because we are unsure about whether we would be welcome on that part of the other person’s territory.

Slide 30: We can feel invaded if the other person broaches a matter that we feel is out of bound to them People often ask for or give permission in a code – a subtle hint or a mere clue of their intention Often we realise we have intruded on private territory only when the other person reacts Misunderstandings resulting from such intrusions on private territory can destroy a conversation.

Slide 31: Beware of Intrusions. Handle Territory Issues Delicately Learn to read the signs correctly Remember we are as possessive of our own territories as the other person.

Slide 32: Setting a Structure. Conversations = Mess. Rushed / Wandering / Repetitive / Parallel – Each telling their own story with no reference to what the other person is saying. If conversation is a verbal dance we often find ourselves trying to dance to two different tunes at the same time or treading on each other’s toes. Our conversations often lack a structure.

Slide 33: All living organisms have a structure – they cannot grow and develop healthily unless they conform to structuring principles. Conversations too have structuring principles. We can improve the quality of our conversation by recognising these structures and making them even more sophisticated. The structure of a conversation derives from our thinking which is a two-stage process.

Slide 34: First Stage Thinking The thinking we do when we are looking at reality. It allows us to recognise something because it fits into some pre-existing mental pattern or idea Ideas. Make sense of reality identify first- stage-thinking translating language into reality We are able to name an object or event – we simplify a structure by drawing a diagram.

Slide 35: Can YOU recognise this ?

Slide 36: Second Stage Thinking Manipulates the language we have created to achieve a result. Having named something we can talk about it coherently. Our conversations always follow this simple structure – we cannot talk about something until we have named it. BUT – How we name something determines the way we talk about it. The quality of Second- Stage thinking depends on the quality of our First Stage thinking.

Slide 37: We are very good at Second-Stage thinking. We are good at manipulating language – so good that we build machines to do it for us – Computers are excellent manipulators of binary language. Problem is – We are not nearly as good at First- Stage thinking We give names to things without thinking In conversations too we leap to conclusions.

Slide 38: Effective conversation manages structure by – 1. Separating the two stages 2. Checking that we both know what stage we are in 3. Asking questions appropriate to each stage Most of our conversations complete the First Stage in a few seconds. We leap to judgments. We take our perceptions for granted No amount of Second Stage thinking will make up for faulty or limited first stage thinking. Good thinking pays attention to both stages.

Slide 39: Managing Behaviour – Conversations are never simply exchange of words. Supporting our words is a whole range of non-verbal communication Tone of Voice / Gestures / Eye Movements Eye Contact / Body Posture / Physical positions we adopt in relation to each other We have less control over our non-verbal behaviour than over how we speak because we learn our body language implicitly or vicariously.

Slide 40: Non-verbal messages are important because – 1. They communicate feeling – the primary way of expressing our emotions or instinctive reactions 2. They are more reliable – difficult to fake 3. It means we can never NOT COMMUNICATE 4. They relate strongly to verbal messages – they reinforce regulate emphasise contradict or substitute for the words we use Our non-verbal communication sometimes says things to the other person that we don’t intend them to know.

Slide 41: Conversations often go wrong as we sometimes misinterpret non-verbal messages BECAUSE 1. They are ambiguous 2. They are continuous – go beyond silence 3. They are multi-channel. Everything is happening at once – Eyes / Hands / Feet / Body Position. We evaluate them holistically. This makes them strong but unspecific 4. They are culturally determined. Only few are universal.

Slide 42: Effective communicators manage their behaviour. They work hard to align their non-verbal messages with their words. We all act when we hold conversations. Managing our behaviour simply means trying to act appropriately.

Slide 43: Acknowledgements – This presentation is based on excerpts from the book “ Improve your Communication Skills “ by Alan Barker.

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