alper.nl

We’ll say nothing when we should speak up. We’ll quarrel when we should inquire. We’ll remain reticent when we should be resolved. We’ll be closed-minded and critical when we should be open-minded and curious.

On the one hand, a “little voice” in the back of his brain urged him to raise his concern; on the other hand, he didn’t want to be labeled a troublemaker, a non–team player, or a “high-maintenance” flight operations officer.

Put simply, conversational capacity is the ability to have open, balanced, nondefensive dialogue about tough subjects and in challenging circumstances.

But this collegiality came at a cost: their nice culture created a bad business. While the team members enjoyed pleasant meetings and warm relationships, they sacrificed the candor needed for rigorous problem solving and decision making in order to maintain the amiable environment.

The National Transportation Safety Board, the entity responsible for investigating civil aviation accidents in the United States, estimates that 25 percent of aviation accidents occur because someone doesn’t speak up when a mistake is being made.

“To be honest, it makes me mad. I went out of my way to hire the best and the brightest people I could find, but I’m not getting access to all the intellectual firepower I’m paying for.”

A person with high conversational capacity can do just that. He’s able to remain open-minded, nonreactive, and fully engaged in tough circumstances that send his less disciplined colleagues into a highly reactive state of mind. Balancing candor and curiosity, he converses with his teammates in a way that actually increases the conversational capacity of the entire group.

On the one hand, you feel compelled to speak up, but on the other hand, you don’t want to cause trouble, be labeled a troublemaker or non–team player, tarnish your reputation within the team, or damage relationships.

When we minimize, it’s not that we don’t have an agenda, it’s that our agenda is subverted by a strong need to keep things comfortable, to avoid conflict, to keep things calm.

Any issue can set off our need to win, but especially those ideas that contradict our current ways of thinking, our notions of what is acceptable, proper, or right. When we snap into win mode, we circle our cognitive wagons and load our conversational guns, ready to defend our current map of reality from all foes. We become dogmatic and close down when we should get curious and open up.

If they’re not speaking up, they’re being paid for something they’re not providing. But the harsh reality is that our own management behavior may be stifling their abilities to contribute. By failing to compensate for the minimizing effect our authority has on our people, and, even more egregiously, when we trigger into win behavior, we encourage our people to minimize, guaranteeing we won’t get full access to their knowledge, expertise, ideas, and suggestions.

Under what circumstances in life do I find myself minimizing at the expense of my effectiveness?

But awareness is not the same as skill. A drowning man may know he’s drowning, but his awareness is no substitute for the ability to swim.

When we’re making an acquisition, initiating a major change process, or wrestling with a tough decision, we want access to as much information and as many perspectives as possible to expand our options for effectively tackling the challenge. We want to reduce the number of blind spots in our view of the situation we’re facing.

When we’re truly dedicated to expanding our thinking and making informed choices, difference is our greatest ally.

Because our level of internal commitment directly correlates with how much energy we put into enacting the decision.

When we’re dedicated to informed and effective choices, we pull people into decision-making or problem-solving processes because they’re useful in two ways. First, involving key players leads to better information and more robust decisions because we have access to their thinking. Second, those same people feel more connected to the decisions that do get made. It’s a double win; we get better decisions that are more effectively implemented.

Contrast this unilateral approach with the more learning-focused joint control, where we proactively make our goals and concerns explicit and ask others to help us manage them. This is a far more effective way to make informed and effective decisions because we’re involving others in the important decisions for how to best achieve the desired objectives.

The managers who asked, “What do you need more or less of from me so I can help you do your job more effectively?” were in positions to make better choices about how to manage their people, but the conversations that helped them make those choices weren’t always an ego massage.

requires the mindful use of four distinct skills that are extremely difficult to balance under pressure: Stating our clear position Explaining the underlying thinking that informs our position Testing our perspective Inquiring into the perspectives of others

Like a topic sentence in good paragraph construction, a position statement is clear, candid, and concise. It lets others know where we stand on an issue, the specific point we’re putting forward.

To that end, let’s look at more vigorous tests to employ in situations where it may be more difficult for others to push back, or when we’re putting forward a particularly strong perspective: That’s how I see the problem. What does the problem look like from your perspective? Right now I feel like my idea makes perfect sense, and that makes me nervous. Are you seeing something I’m missing? I am more interested in making an informed decision than in winning or being right, so I’d like to hear your point of view—especially if it differs from my own. If I’ve got a blind spot about this issue, please help me to see it. I’ve shared what I think and why I think it. I’m curious to hear how other people are thinking about this problem—especially those who have a different take on it than I do. To help me improve how I’m looking at this decision, I’d really like to hear from someone who has a perspective that challenges mine. I’d like someone to expand my view of this situation. Who has a different way of looking at it? I know I may be wrong about this—what do you think? If you disagree with me, please let me know. I’d really like to hear your point of view. Push back on me here—especially if you think I am being unfair. What would our worst critic say about this decision?

Randy’s handling of this conversation is impressive. Neither accepting the accusation at face value nor dismissing it, he defused the explosive situation by getting curious. By inquiring into the underlying reasoning behind the assertion, he brought the conversation back to a more balanced, data-based dialogue, pulling a tense and divisive parent-teacher conference right back to the sweet spot.

What are you seeing that leads you to that view? I have to admit that I see the issue very differently, but before I jump to conclusions, please tell me what you have seen or heard that leads you to see it the way you do. Tell me more about how you’re looking at this issue. Obviously, you’re looking at this differently. Help me see this through your lens. How are you making sense of X? What does this look like from your (marketing/finance/engineering) perspective? Help me expand my thinking on this. Tell me how you see X. What have you seen or heard that leads you to think X? Can you provide a couple of examples that illustrate your position? Clearly, we don’t agree. Let’s see what our different perspectives can teach us about this issue. Explain in more detail how you’re seeing the situation. I’m intrigued by the way you’re framing this issue. Can you give an additional example or two so I can better understand your thinking? Can you give me an example of X? Can you illustrate why you see this so differently than I do? When team members haven’t even shared their positions, much less their thinking, and we want to invite their perspectives into the conversation, we might say: We’ve been bouncing this idea around for quite some time, and we haven’t heard from you yet. As you’ve been listening to the pros and cons of this decision, what’s your take on the best choice?

Are you seeing anything that the rest of us may have missed? I’d be interested in hearing your views on this problem. Do you have a different perspective than those that have already been shared?

Imagine a team full of such people. Now imagine an organization full of such teams.

Any dolt can shut down or argue when he or she is being challenged, but it requires real strength to remain open to learning, squarely focused on informed choice, even when we’re feeling stressed and vulnerable. Our capacity to rein in our derailing tendencies in circumstances where other people cannot is a sign that we’re in disciplined control of our behavior and not a piteous slave to our emotional reactions.

For a really challenging conversation—a 10/10 (rated 10 on the difficulty scale and 10 on importance)—there is no substitute for practicing with a partner. By having a colleague play the person with whom we need to have the conversation, we can more realistically assess and improve our ability to maintain conversational discipline.

As we build our discipline for working in the sweet spot, we’re seeking the yin and yang of dialogue by being bold, authentic, and direct and, simultaneously, open-minded, unpretentious, and inquisitive.

When a consensus decision is the best option, a more balanced approach helps to level the playing field. It’s far harder for the team member with the strong win tendency to run away with the decision if the team has the capacity to work in the sweet spot

Trust isn’t a prerequisite for effective conversations; it’s the product of effective conversations.

When it comes to building our competence, the workplace is our dojo—an ideal practice space for building and refining our skills.

As these men explore the city, their unique cultural, educational, experiential backgrounds lead them to filter the available sensory input in very different ways.

The key is to lean our ladder into difference. We don’t learn much by engaging people who agree with our views, we learn the most by engaging people who don’t. This dramatically increases our ability to detect and correct errors in how we’re looking at a situation and to generate a far more accurate mental map. With this in mind, we treat anyone who disagrees with us as the most valuable person in the room.

When we double-loop learn we hop off our hamster wheel of thought and question the way we’ve made sense of the problem in the first place.

described to his fellow workshop participants the loud and combative arguments he and his team had in meetings. They were, as he put it, “very intense.”

Like a group of skilled jazz musicians, a team that can deliberately double-loop learn is more nimble and adaptable in the face of unusual, shifting, complex circumstances because team members can better adjust their thinking to fit the new challenge.

Our minds, in other words, have a self-serving, single-loop tendency to resist information that threatens our current view of reality, so they filter the world around us so we see what we want to see.

When people, teams, and organizations react defensively to an idea, what is it they’re defending? Their current idea and the assumptions, beliefs, and mental models on which it stands—the very things they need to question and adjust in order to double-loop learn.

Because conflict is the primary catalyst for double-loop learning, only teams with reliably high conversational capacity can deliberately orchestrate it.

Their research demonstrates that as people consistently practice the replacement behaviors, they actually change the physical structure of their brains, because, just like a muscle, the neural circuits for any activity grow where they’re being used and atrophy where they’re being neglected.

With regular practice, we produce a flywheel effect, where the more we use the skills, the more our skills grow, and the more our skills grow, the more we use the skills. Is it hard work? Sure it is. Any skill worth learning takes effort.

Use every meeting, problem, decision, conflict, or change as an opportunity to build your skills. There should be no such thing as a boring meeting because you’re practicing as you participate, facilitate, or both.

Your naturally self-serving tendency to look outward, in other words, is a defensive routine: You avoid looking at your own behavior by placing all your attention on the behavior of others.

What are my tendencies, and how are they displayed?

When it comes to disciplined dialogue, you do this by listening to what’s being played, and then playing what’s missing.

Acknowledge and reward people who are making a genuine effort, and do it both publicly and privately. “I tested a view earlier, and Jane took me up on it and pushed back. I know that wasn’t easy, and I’m grateful you did it. I’m hoping to see more of that kind of behavior from everyone around the table as time goes on.”

When someone puts out a naked position, they inquire into it. When someone forgets to test, they jump in and test for that person. When they put forward their own perspective they shore up the conversational capacity of the team by intentionally balancing their push and their pull.

One is a routine problem,1 which can be difficult and bothersome, but for which we have ready experts and proven solutions on which we can depend for a fix. In other words, a routine problem is routine not because it happens regularly but because we have a routine for dealing with it.

Far from routine, an adaptive challenge is a problem for which there are no easy answers,2 no proven routines for dealing with the issue, no expert who can ride in and save the day.

They treated the implementation process like a routine checklist, and failed to address its more adaptive aspects—their corporate culture, their old habits, and their instinctively defensive reactions to change.

It makes no sense to march our team into a challenging predicament it’s ill equipped to handle.

They needed the skills to climb out of their dysfunction, but they were too overwhelmed by their dysfunction to acquire the skills.

Adaptive leadership13 is not about coming up with an idea or solution and then convincing the group to adopt it. It’s about orchestrating a process of learning that gets people with different views and agendas learning from each other as they tackle an adaptive challenge.

But when we liberate leadership from authority we empower anyone who wants to foment productive change because we realize that while authority is assigned to us by the organization, leadership is an activity we choose. Seen this way, leadership can be exercised from any point in the system.

Leadership is not about the roles we’re formally assigned; it’s about the roles we choose to perform.

Tina also spent untold hours behind the scenes listening to concerns, smoothing ruffled feathers, and keeping people engaged in the learning. This trio worked together to do the requisite adaptive work—rebuilding relationships, earning back trust, improving how they interacted with each other, and resolving festering conflicts.

“With or without authority, exercising leadership is risky and difficult,” says Heifetz. “Instead of providing answers as a means of direction, sometimes the best you can do is provide questions, or face people with the hard facts, instead of protecting people from change.”

A person with an inflated ego and a strong opinion says, “I know exactly what to do,” and a flock of people passively minimize by going along with the unadulterated bullshit he’s slinging—even when they know, deep down inside, it’s not going to work.

Whenever we choose to head down one of these daring paths we’d better have our demons in check.

We can seek out and enroll partners, colleagues, friends, or teammates as fellow learners—people eager to head up and out of their own sheltered, self-limiting village by acquiring the mindset, learning the skills, and using both to tackle increasingly difficult issues and situations.