Archive for 2008

Dialogue is not like playing Tennis. Some people mistakenly give themselves credit for being good at dialogue when they are treating it like a game of tennis. They treat the discussion as if they have to size up their “opponent’s” ideas like an incoming tennis ball and hit it back forcefully into a place their [...]

A good analogy for dialogue is that of surfing. The surfer stays on top of big waves and uses their strength to surge forward. The big waves can be analogous to emotions. Emotions can propel us forward or they can suck us downward. Surfers who lose their balance may fall off their surfboard and get [...]

In another article, I wrote, “Many managers dread having to do the annual performance review of their subordinates. And with good reason. They have had people get mad at them during performance reviews and stay sour for some time. They can usually remember at least one time when they resented the review they received. They [...]

Many managers dread having to do the annual performance review of their subordinates. And with good reason. They have had people get mad at them during performance reviews and stay sour for some time. They can usually remember at least one time when they resented the review they received. They remember that it hurt their [...]

In my Web-conferencing Virtual-Workshop, Leadership Communication™, we sometimes use cases as a way to practice applying the skills we have already learned. In the following case we practiced using two sets of skills: strategic thinking – knowing what you really want, and communicating in a way others can hear by starting with factual observations. In [...]

In other articles I have talked about the importance of starting crucial conversations with the facts. What can you observe? Tell the other person what you saw or heard in a specific situation. Now I would add that we also need to avoid making up stories about these facts. In our stories, we tend to [...]

The Dean of Harvard Business School, Jay O. Light, has written about the importance for leaders of having soft skills like self-awareness. CEO Magazine, Sept/Oct. 2008, p. 53, quotes Light: “Self-awareness, for example, is a very important leadership skill. To what extent can you teach self-awareness in a classroom?” Also on p. 53, The Dean [...]

To be a better communicator, avoid these things: 1. Rushing to judgments, evaluations, conclusions. Instead, start with the facts. What did you observe? Describe what you saw or heard in this situation. 2. Being critical, blaming, accusatory, inflammatory. We know how we react to these things, so how come we dish them out so readily? [...]

Would you like to increase your ability to “Speak in Manner Others Can Hear”? The key skill is to start your crucial conversations with a factual observation, not a judgment. You should observe facts about a situation that you want to discuss. Hopefully, you can state the facts in a way that the other person [...]

How to handle crucial conversations? Here are some steps to take. 1) If you know you must have a crucial conversation, prepare for it. When is it worth the time to prepare? If you have these three items of a crucial conversation: – When an important issue is involved. – The other person or group [...]