by Jacqui Hitt

 

Jacqui Hitt is founder of JMH, an independent consultancy specialising in communication, engagement and change. Over the last 18 years, she has worked in the UK, Europe, US and Asia helping organisations engage their people around important business issues using a blend of communication, coaching, dialogue, psychology and learning based approaches.

 

“Human beings think together and coordinate action through language.
Conversation is real work.”
 
Humbert Maturana,
Evolutionary Biologist
 
 
In many ways conversations are the life blood of any organisation however large or small. Without some form of dialogue between the individuals and teams who work there very little can be achieved. It's part of what makes human beings, and the institutions they create, so successful: through talking and listening ideas are created, knowledge is shared, solutions are generated and issues are resolved.
 
Whether you’re handling customers, designing new products or managing the back office, much of what happens in your area of the business will depend on the discussions you and your colleagues have around what you want to achieve and how you will make it happen. When these discussions are productive, and the thinking upon which they are based is constructive, teams can achieve high levels of performance and great results. All too often, however, such interactions lack focus, direction and energy. This can impact on the levels of engagement and commitment of those involved, and slow down the organizations ability to deliver its goals.
 
Harnessing the potential of these conversations presents a great opportunity for internal communication professionals. By helping to shape such interactions, whether formally or informally, they can be turned into meaningful and powerful forms of dialogue that move the organisation – and its people - forward.
 
 Think back to the last conversation you had where a leader wanted to involve you in solving a problem or engage you on an important business issue. How was it? Did the process reinforce the status quo or open up new possibilities? Was is collaborative and inspiring? Did it change anything for the better and move things forward?
 
Take the typical town hall meetings that take place in many organisations. So many seem to follow the same formula and very few live up to their potential. In many cases what happens is that everyone in a particular area or office is invited to attend and, because the ‘big boss’ is in town, the venue is packed. For the next hour or so, the boss shares their carefully crafted view of the world and at the end answers a handful of questions. Few, if any, attendees are willing to ask the questions that are really on their minds for fear of limiting their careers.  If you ask both the bosses and the people who attended such meetings how they found the event, their answers are usually similar: “It was fine but we didn’t really get chance to connect or talk about the real issues.” Well-organised and on-message these meetings may be but in this format, they are rarely a good use of people’s time or the organisation’s money.
 
Contrast this with a series of employee meetings held by an international law firm. Concious that they were going through a huge amount of change, their executive team decided that they wanted to ‘hear what our people really think about what’s going on.” In pairs they visited key offices and held a number of open sessions with staff. Each session was structured around a series of powerful questions. The executive team member opened the session with candid and personal observations on the challenges that so much change presented to them personally and professionally and then they sat back to listen. Careful use of questioning encouraged people to share their thoughts, ideas and frustrations in a constructive way. At the end of the session both the executives and the participants felt they had a fruitful and constructive dialogue about the future that had ‘helped to move us on’. 
 
This last example illustrates the power of taking a dialogue-led approach. It results in a far more purposeful, involving and engaging experience that actively and constructively supports change.
 

Why team briefings are very rarely about dialogue

When team briefings are initially introduced they have the potential to transform the conversations teams have around important business issues. Unfortunately, due to limited line manager training, they often become a process for ‘information exchange’ where the managers use the briefing document provided to simply update people - and if they are lucky their team gets the chance to ask some questions. It’s a very far cry from creating real dialogue. To do that leaders have to bury their own agendas, encourage people to find their own answers and be willing to really listen to what others have to say. So what is dialogue?

 
“Dialogue …is about a shared inquiry, a way of thinking and reflecting together. It is not something you do to another person. It is something you do with people”.
 
William Issacs, Dialogue and The Art of Thinking Together
 
Dialogue often means different things to different people. One of the most common ways of thinking about it is as a shared exploration towards greater understanding, connection or possibility. In its most basic form, each person:

 

 
•          Talks about what’s really important to them;
•          Really listens to others and sees how thoroughly they can understand other people’s views and experience;
•          Says what’s true for them without making another’s view wrong;
•          Sees what they can learn together by exploring things together;
•          Avoids monopolizing the conversation and makes sure everyone has a chance to speak.
 
What this means for individuals is that they need to be willing to:
 
•          Focus on what really matters;
•          Listen with your full attention;
•          Be open and honest about what you think;
•          Respect other people’s point of view,
•          Focus on finding the best solution or way forward rather than the one you think is right;
•          Allow others to speak without interrupting.
 
These principles can be used to shape many different types of face-to-face communication – from team meetings to workshops, conferences and events.
 
The difference between dialogue and debate It’s important to recognise the difference between dialogue and debate because they both have their place. Debate is useful for making decisions and taking votes while dialogue is about new possibilities and ways forward. One of our challenges is that we live in a debate culture (or what Deborah Tannen calls ‘argument culture’) where having the strength of your convictions is highly valued. While that’s useful in some contexts, it actively works against finding new solutions to issues through increasing engagement, collaboration and innovation.
 
A model for creating ‘dynamic dialogue’
  
fig. Hitt 1

 

 
One of the challenges with creating meaningful dialogue is how best to structure it so that it is purposeful. This involves getting the balance right between providing appropriate inputs to help shape the conversation and giving people the space they need to explore the issues and generate ideas. The above dynamic dialogue model is designed to achieve this balance by making sure that key employee interactions are grounded in real business issues, that they give people the space to explore what these mean and that an appropriate way forward is agreed.
 
The factors that help encourage meaningful dialogue to flourish
Successful dialogue involves nurturing a number of different factors within an organisation– many of which support and reinforce each other. Some are closely linked to leadership style and the type of internal climate and culture that exists within the organisation. Others revolve around respecting and valuing others.

 

 
•          Having leaders who are comfortable with helping others find their own answers to dilemmas (rather than feeling they have to themselves) and really listen to what their employees have to say. This doesn’t mean leaders do nothing: its means that they actively encourage and coach people to excel.
 
•          Allowing people to discuss the real issues facing the business (rather than the ones that it is deemed safe to discuss) and take ownership for finding solutions. This can take courage especially from leaders because many prefer to focus on the positive rather than acknowledging that reality is filled with tensions and choices. Getting real on issues usually results in far greater levels of engagement.
 
•          Understanding the power of listening and actively encouraging different points of view. The ability to listen well is still a rather illusive quality in leaders as is a willingness to accept that not everyone has to agree with your particular point of view.
 
•          The people taking part are willing to keep an open mind (suspending their assumptions, putting aside their personal agendas and avoiding jumping to conclusions too soon) because they realised that what mattered was finding the best possible way forward rather than the one they think is right, easy or most obvious.
 
•          Being willing to share and build on ideas in a constructive and creative way.
One thing that will stop dialogue in its tracks is people keeping their ideas to themselves and a ‘yes but’ attitude.  
 
•          Giving people time to time to consider and reflect on what could be rather than what is – this involves challenging assumptions and being willing to consider alternativesand is an essential part of encouraging creativity and innovation.
 
•          Visibly showing people that their views are valued and respected – this can be as simple as not interrupting others, concentrating on what is being said (rather than your own stream of thoughts) keeping your eyes on the person speaking and reflecting back what you’ve heard – all things that a remarkable number of people find very hard to do!
 
If you’re interested in what sort of an environment is created when few if any of the above factors exist then the recent BBC TV series ‘Can Gerry Robinson fix the NHS?’ provides a very real example.During the series the business guru spent time at an NHS hospital in South Yorkshire trying to help them run more efficiently. By the end of the programme he was quite clearly in despair. Virtually every interaction that was filmed showed a total lack of dialogue between staff, consultants and management. The end result: An inflexible and inefficient environment for all.
 
How dialogue can help people adapt to change
 
We are all familiar with the statistics on how often organisational change fails. One of the reasons is that there is too little real dialogue involved. People are simply expected to accept the changes that are imposed on them and rarely given the opportunity to influence the process or the time to adapt effectively. This can result in a whole range of responses: from denial to passive resistance or active blocking. Adopting a dialogue based approach can help turn this into a far more constructive process. While it may seem more time consuming in the beginning, it can dramatically improve the likelihood of success as the following examples show.
 
Example 1: Involving the right people in creating the solution
 
When an energy company needed to move to a HR shared services model to reduce costs they decided to actively involve those affected in designing the new organisation. All the staff involved were invited to input their ideas and thinking to create a solution that would work for both the business and its people. While it took more time and effort initially to get the project off the ground, it quickly paid dividends. The final solution was highly innovative and adaptable to changing business needs. Through introducing new technology and more flexible ways of working, the company was able to retain most of its talented and experienced HR team. This helped keep disruption to HR services to a very minimum and sent a strong signal to the business about how best to handle change.
 
Example 2: Creating dialogue around first-class service
 
A large UK government department was aware that it had important issues to tackle if it was to reach the target level of customer service it had committed to deliver. As part of a wide programme of service improvement, the internal change team were looking for a way for over 1,000 people at six different venues to simultaneously share successes, best practices and ideas for delivering first-class service in a constructive and insightful way.
 
They were looking for a solution that would address the following issues:
 
•          The people taking part were from different departments and offices and were unlikely to know each other;
•          It was important that everyone felt able to share their thoughts and ideas right from the start;
•          The process needed to actively encourage collaboration and cross-divisional working;
•          It needed to allow senior managers to demonstrate a more engaging leadership style.
 
The solution they chose was to design two dialogue-based engagement activities as part of a one day conference. Using large discussion mats, groups were provided with information to stimulate their thinking and a series of activities to promote dialogue. Participants were encouraged to write down their thoughts and ideas on the discussion mats so that their input could be gathered and reviewed. Senior managers spread themselves through out the room at each venue taking time to listen to the conversations taking place. Satellite connections were then used to share ideas and achievements between the venues, helping create a strong sense of collaboration and being part of one talented team.
 
Example 3: Building a personal commitment to driving safety
 
A major oil company needed to get its employees to reduce the number of driving accidents and save lives. They realised that it is one thing to help people understand what driving safety means and quite another to help them truly live it on a day-to-day basis. In practical terms that meant making sure drivers always wore a seatbelt, switched off their mobile phones whilst their vehicles were in motion, that they didn’t drive when tired and made sure any loads were secure. Success would depend upon convincing people to make the right choices when it came to driving safely and changing attitudes, assumptions and behaviours that were often habitual and engrained.
 
While from a policy point of view the company needed to introduce a new driving safety standard, they recognised that they needed to engage people in a meaningful dialogue around what driving safety means for them in their local environment. As a result the road safety team’s engagement approach revolved around helping people discuss driving safety in a highly supportive, personal and compelling way.
 
This included interactive sessions where people could explore the issues for themselves, work out what actions to take and identify what they needed to do to improve. The end result: fewer accidents and no employee fatalities. 
 
The roles leaders play in creating dynamic dialogue
Leaders inevitably have a central role to play in modelling dialogue approaches in their day to day work. Some will find it is a natural evolution of their own leadership style while others will have to learn how to integrate its principles into their interactions with others. Training leaders in coaching skills is often a good place to start as the tools and techniques are often closely linked to the process of creating effective dialogue.
 
Example: Dialogue masquerading as something completely different
 
A senior manager arranged to meet with her direct reports to discuss how best to restructure the department. She invited them to an away-day focusing on exploring how best to structure the team and said she was keen to have a ‘dialogue’ around the best way forward. However, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to get her team’s input on what the options might be and their implications, she told them what structure she was introducing and asked them for their reaction. This caused a huge and ugly debate because number of important people decisions had been made without the full facts being known. At the end of the process the senior manager acknowledged that what turned out to be a very painful process could have been avoided if she had been willing to have a proper dialogue with her team right from the start.
 
Example: Changing the dynamic: the role leaders can play
 
Two teams within a government department needed to work more closely together to help improve what customers experienced. The two teams had very different views of the best approach to take and this was getting in the way of making progress. The director of one of the teams felt that a key problem was the conversations people were having with each other: they tended to be defensive, confrontational and focused on what was rather than what could be.

 

 
A workshop was created that allowed the two teams to come together to explore the issues they faced. A member of the board was asked to open the session. After careful consideration and with coaching, he opened the session in a novel but simple way. Rather than standing and making a speech at the front, he grabbed a chair, sat in the middle of the group and asked everyone to gather round. He then shared a story that highlighted why customer service had to change and explained how, working together, both teams could make a profound difference. He then invited other people to share their thoughts and ideas for the type of customer service that they wanted to see and how they could help make that happen. In less than 20 minutes, the whole tone shifted as the teams let go of unhelpful assumptions about each other and developed a new way of working together.
 
Tools and techniques you can use to create meaningful dialogue
 
Creating a culture where meaningful dialogue flourishes involves continually looking for ways to use and apply the principles that underpin dialogue. It is also an essential part of creating real engagement in organisations. A good starting point is to make sure that key interventions:
 
·         Focus on real business issues
·         Allow people time and space to explore different options and solutions
·         Encourage deep listening
·         Respect different points of view
·         Give everyone the chance to input and share their views
·         Are built around powerful or insightful questions.


 
There are a variety of tools that can also be used to increase dialogue, some of the most useful of which include:
 
 
·         Taking a World café type approach
This is an innovative approach to dialogue developed by Juanita Brown and David Issacs. The Café format involves seating people in groups of four or five around small tables with paper covers and pens for writing and drawing. The group explores issues that matter in their current situation and they write their ideas and thoughts on the paper table cloths. After 30 minutes all but one member of the group, moves to join conversations on another table carrying their ideas, insights and questions into the next round of dialogue. After several rounds, the whole groups comes together to share their collective discoveries and insights helping to increase knowledge and identify real possibilities for action. The approach can be used for groups from as small as 12 people to over 1,000: it usually takes a minimum of two hours.  Find out more at: www.worldcafe.com
 
·         Creating interactive discussion mats and dialogue sheets
 
These are usually A1 in size and highly visual. Some information or content is provided to help stimulate thinking and a series of question or enquiry points are also given to help frame the conversation. Some areas of the sheets are deliberately left blank for people to add their own ideas, thoughts and solutions.
 
A group of between four and eight people work on each discussion mat or dialogue sheet, each person having the chance to share their ideas and opinions.


 
 
·         Sharing stories to stimulate ideas
 
Stories are a good way of helping frame an opportunity or challenge in a compelling way. Sharing stories opens up new possibilities and ideas e.g. if you are holding a dialogue around improving customer service, you can get the participants to share stories of when they have experienced great service and why it was so special. Similarly, if you want to encourage people to think differently, you can ask them to share a story where someone held a very different but equally valid point of view and how that changed their own thinking.
 
·         Using powerful questions effectively
 
The type of questions you ask can have a profound impact on the quality of the conversation and the thinking that takes place. In many ways the questions you ask determine the answers you get.
 
Powerful questions:
 
·         Generate curiosity and invite creativity
·         Focus inquiry and stimulate conversations
·         Are thought provoking and surface underlying assumptions
·         Touch a deeper meaning and stay with participants
·         Travel well and spread around the organisation
 
Here are some key things to remember when framing questions:
 
·         How you choose to construct a question can make a real difference to whether it opens minds or narrows the possibilities you are considering. The following continuum shows the way in which how you open a question influences the power it has.


 
More powerful                                                                            Less powerful
 
 
What if                   What   How   Which   When              Who   Why  Yes/No Questions
 
 
·         Think carefully about the scope of your question as this can help broaden your domain of inquiry. If, for example, you want to explore how best to share information, your options will vary hugely depending on what level you are focusing on e.g. as a team, function or organisation. 
 
·         Almost all questions, explicit or implicit have assumptions built into them:
 
How can we better meet the needs of our customers?
What is the best way of tackling retailers?
What did we do wrong and who is responsible?
What can we learn from what has happened and what are the possibilities now?
How can we address the lack of collaboration between different project teams?
What are all the possibilities for working effectively together going forward?
 
Think for a moment about which of these questions assume a solution? Which assume error or blame and could lead to narrow discussions or defensiveness? Which encourage reflection, creativity and or collaboration among those involved?
 


Useful examples of powerful questions to help shape dialogue
 

 
Questions that provide focus
 
 
Questions that create connections and encourage insight
 
 
·         What question if answered would make the most difference to the future of (your situation/issue)?
·         What’s important to you/us about (this situation/issue) and why do you/we care?
·         What draws you/us to this topic/inquiry?
·         What’s our intention here?
·         What opportunities can you see in (this situation or issue)?
·         What do we know so far/still need to learn about (this situation/issue)?
 
·         What’s taking shape?
·         What patterns are we seeing?
·         What’s emerging here for you?
·         What connections are you making?
·         What really resonated for you from what you’ve heard? What surprised you? What challenged you?
·         What’s missing from the picture that has emerged so far?
·         What is it we’re not seeing?
·         What do we need more clarity about?
·         What’s been your/our major learning, insight or discovery so far?
·         What additional thinking do we need to do?
·         If there was one thing that hasn’t yet been mentioned that would provide further understanding/clarity, what would it be?
 
Questions that move you forward  
 
 
Questions that help check the truth behind assumptions
 
·         What would it take to create change on this issue?
·         What could happen that would enable you/us to feel fully engaged and energised about (this situation/issue)?
·         What’s really possible here?
·         What needs our attention right now for us to move forward?
·         If our success was completely guaranteed, what courageous steps might we choose?
·         How can we support each other in taking the next steps? What role can we each play?
·         What challenges might come our way and how might we meet them?
·         What conversation, if begun today, would create new possibilities for the future of (this situation/issue)?
·         
 
 
 
 
·         What might we be assuming that is limiting our thinking on this issue?
·         If we knew that whatever we are assuming wasn’t true, what ideas might we have?
·         How might other people (e.g. CEO, customer, etc) with different ways of thinking/beliefs view the situation? What would they do
·         If things could be exactly right in this situation, what would we need to change?
·         If we had all the money/time/resources we needed, how would this change our thinking?
 

 


 

 

 


Page Information

  • 4 months ago [history]
  • View page source
  • You're not logged in
  • No tags yet learn more

Wiki Information

Recent PBwiki Blog Posts