Knowing how to actually converse, not just talk, is an absolute necessity in the digital world.
MIT’s well known digital psychologist, Sherry Turkle, argues in one of her recent books, “Reclaiming Conversation,” that we have sacrificed mere connection for conversation. She goes on to write that conversation is the “cornerstone for empathy and as well as for democracy; it sustains the best in education and in business it is good for the bottom line.” I agree with her fully.
But I found it appalling that Turkle has practically nothing to say of how to resolve our conversational problem. She provides approximately 20 out of 350 pages to recommend that we turn off our digital devices and put ourselves in situations where we have to “talk,” assuming falsely that talk and conversation are identical and that conversation is a natural competency. Conversation, however, is not natural, but a learned competency—a fact of which Turkle and her over-credentialed, high-IQ colleagues inevitably fail to understand. Furthermore, conversation is not just talk. Nor is it aimless. In today’s world, conversation is both purposeful and highly necessary. One of the most significant reasons is that diversity in the workforce seemingly promotes misunderstanding. But it takes conversational competency to break down these misunderstandings.
Misunderstanding
Misunderstanding in organizations is the norm: not the exception. For the millions who labor in organizations, that should be no surprise. The people who study current organizations find six “major” reasons for interpersonal misunderstandings in nearly all organizations, especially the big ones.
*More levels of hierarchy or more work teams with more members.
*Cultural, age, gender, sex, religious, and value differences.
*Struggles for power.
*Growth of subcultures and anti-organizational cultures.
*Competition among peers for scarce resources.
*Increased use of interactional media.
Nothing new here, except the new insights that these “misunderstandings” are true everywhere in the digital world--and that most professionals have a great deal of difficulty dealing with them. There is also a list of reasons why most stumble in trying to deal with them. The reasons are not immediately obvious. What actually makes misunderstandings ever more difficult to deal with is that very few of us have the interactional background, education and experience models for turning misunderstanding into conversational successes. Significantly, it is especially difficult to unlearn the past. And the past includes a strong orientation to deferring to power resulting in both an inability and a clear resistance to asking questions—one of the most basic strategies for resolving misunderstanding. Even amongst the youngest generations, deference and ignorance typically result in debilitating caution and multiple misunderstanding.
Surprise!
There’s one fact about misunderstandings that few understand: they are one of the best options for turning your career into success. The surprising impact of working through a breakdown is not merely a fix.
To claim that success, we need to do some background work. First, the fact of the matter is that conversation has a different “structure” than talk. Talk is structured as a monolog or a presentation, as in “my talk was about.” The physical structure of talk is obvious when a person stands in front of an audience or a team and uses a presentation lectern. But where you stand or using a lectern is not the defining attribute of talk. If you pay attention to what’s going on in teams or groups, you’ll find that the words and the verbal structure are often nearly identical to presentation—a problem that limits interaction. One person talks, then another talks, then another. But they are not interacting with each other—they’re just presenting their ideas in a random sequence. They ask no questions of others, do no clarifying, make little adaptations to what’s been said previously, ignore differences and provide no obvious sense of influencing another in the group. If you look closely at the structure of the words, even though there is no lectern, it’s still a presentation—with no opportunity or clear expectation of response from another. The words end with silence and then someone else “talks,” following the same pattern or structure of the previous “talker.” It’s not obvious to most, but it’s still the fact that when team interactions primarily work out of the “talk” structure, the inevitable consequence is misunderstanding. It goes with the turf.
Conversation is not presentation
Conversation differs significantly from presentation, even though many do not register the differences readily. The underlying character of conversation, a verbal experience involving two or more participants, engaging in brief interactions that include a sentence or two of proposal, clarification and questioning about the proposal takes place in brief spurts (as little as ten seconds) back and forth among the participants. The purpose of clarification and questioning is to come to a better understanding, conclusion and at least a partial agreement with the other. And many (sometimes everyone) in the environment will be engaging somewhat sequentially in presentational talk, conversation.
What I’m asserting is that talk and conversation are different verbal categories. So the minimal structure of conversation, in contrast to talk, includes some initiating interaction sequence (between two or more people) at the front end and some terminating, interaction sequence at the back end. If you were watching a conversation, it inevitably looks messy. But effective conversations pool everyone’s resources—and are the means to goal achievement. Along the way, the attentive interactionist will pick up on opportunities for organizational—and personal--growth. Effective, messy conversations limit misunderstandings. Read these words again: effective messy conversations limit misunderstandings. If the conversation has built-in objectives—or is building objectives--much of the time the potential misunderstanding gets revealed and resolved in the interaction.
“Working the conversation”
It’s often the case, that mastering the verbal-ware of conversation is a new experience for many participants. Or the verbal-ware goes off the rails, or a participant says or asks things that they’re not sure—in retrospect—should have happened. You may realize the difficulty while in the “conversation.” Or, upon reflection, you’re uncomfortable or concerned about what happened. When you have these feelings during reflection (and they are usually “feelings”), what do you do? People with a strong, “deference mindset” will end up out in the cold. They may be at the end of their hopes and dreams, a sidelined member of the Millennial Generation or even Generation Z.
My experience with several hundred learners in conversation development finds that without understanding first how to manage failures, many will stop learning the conversational behaviors. So, what I’m recommending is seemingly ass-backwards. What you can count on for dealing with conversational mistakes using the following strategies is that you can more readily deal with feelings of vulnerability or need for overweening deference.
I hope it’s obvious a great presenter may be a very poor conversationalist, just as a great conversationalist may be a very poor public speaker. But becoming an expert at conversation means that you may often engage in a “post-conversation” with the relevant person(s).
There are three over-arching, macro-keys for such verbal-ware success. You’ll want to place these macro-keys at the center of your conversational-ware. And you’ll want to keep trying them on until you’ve got them down pat. You’ll use them the rest of your life, both in business and in the rest of life too. So they need to become unconscious behaviors that you can turn to instantly. I’ve simplified them for the purpose of memory, but it will take numerous experiences with them to develop the speed and agility to develop the expertise.
Post-conversational wares: Revisiting, Restructuring, Revaluing
Revisit:
It's important to understand that revisiting a conversation is nearly always OK. I had one local client for years with whom I regularly revisited issues. Typically he was in a hurry and we failed to finish a given conversation, and I failed to question or clarify issues. Or, I’d changed my mind about something in the previous conversation. So, in the next few days I'd drop back into his office and tell him I wanted to revisit our previous conversation. "Oh, oh," he'd often respond. "How much is this going to cost me?" And sometimes he was right on. But when you're an employee, rather than a consultant, revisiting is often more valuable than the initial conversation. Not only does it announce to the other person that you've given serious thought to a conversation, but that it's an important matter.
Effective post-conversations inevitably stir up new ideas. So there are numerous reasons for revisiting. First, it's important for many employees to understand that revisiting is nearly always a viable option. An initial conversation is just that: an initial conversation--implying more to come. Thinking through that conversation overnight moves the gray matter toward new ways of thinking about an issue. So revisiting is often highly creative. Of course, another reason for revisiting is recognition of overt or covert conflict, including simple misunderstanding or damaging rebuffs.
Restructure:
Structure in conversations refers to reworking the patterns or conditions explicit or implicit in a conversation. All conversations inherently have content, sub-context and relationship matters. Often that's a lot to manage in a single conversation, causing at least one participant in the conversation to want to "redo" the conversation. A whole host of things typically create the need for restructuring. They may be political matters, framing, hierarchy, undiscussables, failure to focus on objectives, useless gossip, conversational takeovers where one couldn't complete his or her ideas, assumptions, quality of data and inferences, openness and transparency--an infinite number of issues.
Revalue:
At their heart, values are judgments about what is good, bad, right, appropriate, important, true, accurate, etc. Our behaviors, attitudes and predispositions to respond favorably or unfavorably to issues in the environment are influenced directly by these values. Much like attitudes and beliefs, values create patterns of behavior. In business our values arise from a host of different issues: organizational rules, managerial expectations, personal needs, processes, disciplines, strategies. Whenever we change the priority or attitude toward a process or behavior, we are revaluing. Revaluing refers to rethinking, adjusting, redoing or even reframing those assessments.
In sum, you’ll find through your own experience that rewards come to those who act on these macro-keys to conversation.