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.