I had the privilege to attend a local Vistage meeting as a guest this morning. The speaker was Craig Weber and the topic was about piercing conversations and conversational capacity. Weber is an engaging speaker and did an excellent job of educating the group on the concept of conversational capacity.
The idea behind conversational capacity is that for any given group of people, there is a list of topics and / or issues that we could rank from most difficult at the top to the easiest at the bottom. If we started at the bottom of the list the group could have productive conversations and proactively solve issues. But as we work our way to the top of the list, the group will eventually stall out and become unproductive. The higher up the list a given group can productively converse is a measure of its conversational capacity.
Weber states that when conversations get difficult most people tend to begin either “minimize” the conflict or trying to “win” the conflict. The problem is that these two behaviors are unlikely to lead to the best possible outcomes. And the most effective teams will find a way to operate in the “sweet spot” which is the middle ground between minimizing and winning.
After explaining the concept, Weber went on to provide some tips on how to build the conversational capacity in our given groups.
Tips for Maintaining the Correct Mindset in Meetings:
- Ask yourself, “What am I seeing that others are missing?”
- Ask yourself, “What are we all missing? What are our blind-spots?”
- Ask yourself, “What do others see on this issue that I don’t?”
Actions for effective decision making:
- State your Position.
- Explain your thinking.
- Test your hypothesis: “What am I missing?”
- Inquiry
Common behaviors of Minimizers:
- Passive body language.
- Withholding their concerns.
- Asking leading questions in an effort to backdoor their positions.
- Feigning agreement.
- Emailing opposing ideas as opposed to face-to-face conversations.
Common behaviors of Winners:
- Aggressive body language.
- No inquiry into opposing ideas or positions.
- Dismissive of others ideas.
- Stating opinions as fact.
- Use of hyperbole.
- Asking leading questions in order to sabotage other persons position.
Other interesting ideas and quotes from the presentation
- Management’s business is building an organization that works!
- Authority figures should generally weigh in last.
- Your ego is the biggest enemy to your conversational capacity.
- “Be that as it may,” is a very sophisticated way of saying “Whatever!”
- A drowning person might know that they are drowning, but that is no substitute for knowing how to swim.
- Most often in life, in order to actually get smarter, we have to feel dumber first.
- The job of the executive is to to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning of the meeting.
Harley Davidson Decision Levels:
- Top Down – No input required.
- Consultative – My Decision, but I want input.
- Consensus – Group Decision, and group input needed.