“Management’s business is building organizations that work,” says Harvard Business School’s Joan Magretta, and conversational capacity is a foundational competence for building teams and organizations that work well – even when the pressure is on.
Award-winning consultant, advisor, and speaker, Craig Weber explains why conversation is perhaps the most powerful tool we have at our disposal in creating positive relationships and productive teams.
We cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around us, says Jane Goodall. What we do makes a difference. We must only decide what kind of difference we want to make. She’s right. No matter our status or station, we can play a leading role in building healthier work relationships, teams, organizations, and communities. We can take action and have an impact. We can wield great influence. We have more power than we think.
Trust is a matter of huge importance in a healthy team, project, or organization. But when it comes to the issue of trust and its relationship to teamwork, most people get it backwards. They see trust as being necessary for good teamwork – as something that must be in place before a group can work together and communicate well.
“It doesn’t do any good to have a lot of really smart people around the table if you can’t access their smarts”
For twenty years I’ve been conducting workshops, advising organizations, and coaching leaders on the importance of conversational capacity – the ability to engage in open, balanced, nondefensive dialogue about difficult subjects and in challenging circumstances. It’s a pivotal competence. A team robust conversational capacity can address its toughest issues in a responsibly rigorous, nondefensive way. A team with anemic capacity, by contrast, can see its performance derailed by a trivial disagreement.
What is Conversational Capacity?
Conversational capacity is the ability to converse in an open-minded, even-handed, evidence-based, and learning-focused way under pressure. It requires those who are participating in a discussion to balance their candor with curiosity, and their courage with humility. It’s a foundational competence. A team with high conversational capacity can address their most pressing challenges in a healthy, productive way. A team with low conversational capacity will derail over a minor difference of opinion. Conversational capacity isn’t just another aspect of teamwork—it defines it. A team that cannot talk about its most pressing issues isn’t really a team at all. It’s just a group of people that can’t work together effectively when it counts.
