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 opponent cannot reach.

They prize their intellectual ability to “out hit” their opponents. They are really more in debate mode than in dialogue mode. Debaters seek to win. Dialoguers seek to learn how the other person thinks and feels. They do not see the other person as an opponent, but rather as someone they can collaborate with for a mutual gain.

If you want to improve your dialogue skills, you need to make sure you start with the right attitudes. Seek to collaborate toward finding a win/win solution to your problem or issue. Utilize Habit 5 of Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” You listen with the goal of understanding rather than the goal of outwitting your opponent.

Another non-tennis approach to dialogue is to flex your own approach to match that of the other person. If you can see that the other person likes a lot of facts and details, give them that. You may prefer seeing the big picture. If you know typology such as the Myers-Briggs, or DISC, you can use that to hone in on how the other person prefers to operate. In Myers-Briggs for example, you know that a Sensor prefers the here and now factual actual and an Intuitive prefers the future-oriented vision of the big picture.

You can dialogue with people better by flexing to use their preferred approach such as starting off with the big picture for an intuitive. Flexing to accommodate others is about the opposite of treating them like a tennis opponent. Dialogue takes some learning because most of us have learned the tennis approach in schools and in general in our culture. Businesses tend to give lip service to dialogue but actually reward being competitive, playing a hard game of tennis. However, using dialogue may yield better results.

Want to get some training to improve you dialogue skills? Explore my individual and group Executive Coaching via our Web-conferencing Virtual-Workshop, Leadership Communication,with a whole Module on Dialogue. For more information, please email me via the “Contact Us” link above or telephone me, Bill Murray, at 919-419-9460.