Authentic conversations deal with interpersonal relationship and trust issues. They focus on restoring relationship and trust when breakdowns occur, to ensure ongoing alignment and commitment is present in the relationship. Developing authentic listening skills is a key element in successfully resolving interpersonal concerns. Authentic listening occurs when listeners respond to the speaker in ways, which indicate that they care about what the person is saying and give the person every opportunity to complete his or her train of thought. The idea is to let the speaker know without a doubt that you are focusing your attention on the speaker’s words and feelings with the specific intent to understand the point they are trying to make. To do this, the listener has to focus on all elements of the speaking map shown below. The listener has to make mental notes about what elements of the speaking map the speaker is disclosing, and what elements the speaker is not disclosing. You will see in importance of this in future posts.
This post summarizes the individual posts that discussed each step in the Authentic Speaking Model. We work with moving our clients’ conversations from Inauthentic and Closed Conversations, to Open and Authentic Conversations. Here is the full model:
While this post discusses the Authentic Speaking Map in a linear fashion, the actual flow of the conversation may not be linear. The speaker may start anywhere, and move to different steps as a speaker deems appropriate. However, in the design of any Authentic Conversation, I believe it is important to declare the concern that is creating the need for conversation and also your commitment to an outcome. When declaring your commitment to the outcome, make sure it is not just about getting the concern resolved, but that it is also about the relationship. Make sure you are committed to improving or enhancing the relationship in some manner. Remember, ultimately, the relationship is as important as resolving the concern.
Once you declare the concern and commitment, I suggest you move to the facts of the situation that are really relevant to the conversation, and then into the interpretation that you have given these facts. When having an authentic conversation it is always a good practice to speak only for yourself. In other words, speak only in “I” terms not in “you” terms. When you speak in “You” terms you have a higher likelihood of being interpreted as accusatory. Once this happens, you are likely to move quickly into a reactive conversation.
The next step would be to express your feelings as a result of your interpretation. After the expression of feelings, move to what you want to get out of the conversation for yourself, for the other person, and in business settings, many times, for the team and also for the company.
After declaring your wants, move into the declaration of possibilities and opportunities. Nothing comes into existence that is not a possibility first. Many times this step is difficult for people. They have a hard time generating possibilities for themselves. When this happens, there is usually a predisposition to no possibilities because of their characterization of the situation, or the other person. Many times we have to do significant coaching during this step. Once you have an inventory of possibilities, you can look at the possibilities and determine which possibilities represent real opportunities; opportunities you should take action on, because they have a high likelihood of resolving the concern.
The final step is to determine the actions to be taken in order to resolve the concern. This means that you have to be willing to make requests of the other person, as well as making offers to the other person. When these requests and offers are negotiated then is essentially a result of promises that assuming the promises are fulfilled will take care of that concern.
The last Authentic Speaking Map™ step is the action step. Nothing happens until action is taken to resolve the concern or issue that started the authentic conversation in the first place. You will see, in future posts, how the authentic speaking steps combined with authentic listening can be used to resolve difficult interpersonal concerns or issues. This can be accomplished without the typical difficulties people have without having a map and/or knowing the steps.
In this last step, everyone in the conversation has to be willing to take actions in order to implement the opportunity or opportunities selected in the previous step. This means that each party has to be willing to make requests and/or offers which, when negotiated, will result in promises to take corrective action. To be effective, promises have to be made within the context of mutual respect and trust.
With this post I am moving into the second half of the Authentic Speaking™ Map. The first half deals with the facts/interpretations/feelings and focuses on creating understanding around the concerns and commitments of the speaker. The second half of the map focuses on coming to an agreement between the speaker and the listener. I will show how this occurs when I bring everything together and discuss how to use the speaking map in conjunction with the Authentic Listening™ Map. I will cover the Authentic Listening Map after I finish the next two segments of the Authentic Speaking Map.
In my experience coaching authentic conversations, I find that the participants, many times, do not have clarity on what they want. Declaring what you want is critical to a successful resolution of an issue or conflict. Believe it or not, declaring what you want is difficult for many people. These people tend to live in expectation, but without their willingness to declare what they want, they usually fail to get what they want.
Declaring what you want requires a sense of personal awareness and the courage to disclose that awareness.
Have you ever experienced a conversation that went wrong? Even with the best of intentions, conversations can move into a domain we call “Conversational Hurricanes.” The first part of this post describes this phenomenon, and gives you some distinction so you can begin to gain better control over your automatic reactions and to design powerful authentic conversations. You cannot intervene in a world you cannot see.
The second part of the post discusses the next speech act – Expressives (Feelings). Conversational Hurricanes get trigged because of the emotional state certain interpretations trigger. Another aspect of Authentic Conversations is to gain access to and express one’s true feelings. It is critical to differentiate between real feelings and thoughts disguised as feelings.
When it comes to assessments, there are two critical skills to master. One is to ground assessments methodically and the other is to avoid the “big collapse.”
Grounding assessments is critical when you are making decisions that affect your organization and your relationships. Separating your interpretations from the facts is also a critical skill when making decisions and when coaching someone. Good coaches are story busters that allow the person they are coaching to reexamine events and generate different, more empowering interpretations. These interpretations give new openings for more effective actions.
When you are engaged in an Authentic Conversation it is critical that you understand the difference between assertions (facts) and assessments (interpretations). Where facts are true or false, interpretations are valid or invalid depending on the authority given to the interpretation. In other words, when I act on an interpretation as if it is valid, then, by my actions, I am giving that interpretation authority. That interpretation is shaping my actions and my world. So, it is dangerous to act on interpretations that are not well grounded. A grounded interpretation means that you have a factual basis for making that interpretation. Interpretations can only be grounded with facts, not other interpretations.
Distinguishing between facts and interpretations, and between grounded and ungrounded interpretations are critical leadership and management skills.
