Ways to Converse

I love this post from Chris Corrigan called, The Simplest Way to Converse. Here's a snippet:

I’ve just finished co-hosting the Art of Hosting training with my mates Tenneson Woolf, Teresa Posakony and Brenda Chaddock, We spent four days with 27 people learning the art of hosting and convening meaningful conversations. There is much that I learned in that, as I always do when I am teaching, but what seems most present for me this morning is Tenneson’s persistent quest to find the simplest way to host meaningful conversations.

How would you rate your abilities to converse? How important is this to managerial work? It's fundamental and in the list of top five managerial practices, I would say. Here's the cool thing - you can improve conversation quality fairly easily with a focus on just a few basics.

A couple previous posts related to dialogue here, here, and here

Comments

[Jason]

Fascinating stuff. I'm suddenly reminded of the people I know who are very poor at conversation.. and I can't help but wonder why or how its possible. Sure, there are easy conversations and hard one - each with different parameters - but it's still just talking and listening.

Similary - I am also reminded of people who are 'too good' at conversation - either because they are female or have received excessive coaching. The ones who nod a lot, tilt their head too much when listen and are generally a little to intense when in conversation mode.

as management consultant, any success i may have enjoyed has been down to a simple rule of thumb :

i have one of these [points to mouth]
but TWO of these [points to ears]

that must mean something.

[chuck]

Lisa,

I think that conversation is C-R-I-T-C-A-L. I just performed some consulting work for a college and the manager that was there was absolutely inefficient at conversation. He spoke in bits and pieces - making assumptions that I already knew pieces and parts of any given project. Very wrong. I had to spend more time asking him about details and performing research with some other associates to get an idea of what this manager wanted done - was not worth my time so I left the job.

-Chuck

[Lisa Haneberg]

Jason and Chuck - I concur! Great managers create an environment where outstanding business conversations can occur.