Good things happen …. one conversation at a time

My work as a coach centres around having conversations. At its simplest, that’s all I offer my clients. A series of 60 - 90 minute conversations - over a timeline of their choice and at a frequency that they control.

I’m also involved in a leadership mentoring programme for women in the legal profession where our mentoring partnership consists of monthly conversations over the course of several months.

In my previous work as director of a busy legal team, my day was full of conversations with people in the team.

What is it about a conversation that makes things happen?

In my old team we were responsible for multiple projects, providing fast, accurate and relevant legal advice on a vast range of issues. Nothing ever stayed the same from one day to the next. These days my clients are grappling with complex professional and personal challenges and ambitions and are often thinking about making significant changes in their lives.

So, what is it about a conversation that creates momentum and makes things happen?

We all have our own unique bag of education, information, expertise, experience, skills, enthusiasms and talent. But without contributions from other people, we don’t make much progress alone.

For good things to happen, we need to share our bag and trust that other people will allow us to share theirs.

Effective conversations can make good things happen because they build connection and mutual understanding. From those starting points, it becomes easier to find common ground, explore mutual interests and goals and expand on the each other’s thinking to find better solutions.

Build Connection

We all know that we work much better with people we trust. It’s worth reflecting on how that trust was built. Trust building takes time and involves processing the experiences (good and bad) we have with other people. Over time, we form an opinion of whether it is safe to trust someone or not.

We can start to build that trust in our conversations.

Pay attention to the person speaking and don’t interrupt. Allow the person the time and space to think and to finish what they want to say.

Listen. Be genuinely curious about that the other person is saying.

Show respect for the other person’s skills and experience. You care about how other people treat you - that person also cares. As humans we feel perceived slights and disrespect acutely and don’t quickly forget them.

Most people are trying their best - their best might not be your best - but consider whether you've just made a pre-judgment about them and instead, be open to your actual experience of the person.

Seek to Understand

Listen to the person with the intention to understand the situation from their perspective. Park your own perspective and opinions and enquire about theirs.

When we disagree with someone’s perspective, we find it difficult to be receptive to that point of view. Seeking to understand doesn’t mean you have to agree, it’s just about being receptive.

If you build on that understanding, it becomes easier to find common ground. When you can establish some common ground, it helps create an alliance in support of your respective goals.

It can also help expand both perspectives, so that you end up with better thinking and solutions that neither of you would have come up with alone.

Positive change happens one conversation at a time.

Whether the change is about finding a solution to a problem, responding to an opportunity, improving the performance of a team or improving the quality of our own decision making, the quality of our conversations has a significant impact on the outcome.

The great thing is that we can start to experiment with these ideas in our next conversation and see what happens!

Listen more

Don’t interrupt

Show the same respect you would like to receive.