Conversations make or break your team's performance
Committing to better conversations is an investment in your teams. Photo by bantersnaps on Unsplash
A couple of weekends ago, I attended Sydney University's Evidence-Based Coaching Conference. It was great to hear from leading thinkers and practitioners from around the world. Among the many take-away messages that I heard was something that I had been exposed to before. Dr Michael Cavanagh repeated the following...
“The quality of the conversation determines the quality of the relationships and the quality of the relationships determines the quality of the organisational system.”
This seems simple and to some, perhaps it's obvious. I'm not sure that it's either of those things. It is, however, a very useful way for us to look at our teams.
I have written before about the fact that teams are complex systems that interact with numerous other complex systems, so you can easily replace "organisational system" with "team". Paying close attention to both the quality and quantity of the conversations across a team is something that is easy to overlook despite how apparently accessible they are. It is because our team relationships have similarities to other relationships in our lives. The frequency and familiarity of contact can often lead to patterns in our behaviour that we don't want or realise. It is often not until we are prompted to look properly at how we are operating (usually when things go wrong) that we can see that we have fallen into ways of interacting that are weakening rather than strengthening the system (our team).
Many of the common complaints that I hear from leaders and teams can be linked to the quality of conversations:
"We need to collaborate more" is an obvious lack of quality conversations
"I should have been brought in on this earlier" is a reference to the timing of conversations
"I wish others would show a bit more initiative" reflects an absence of meaningful conversations that allow people to feel empowered to make decisions and take action.
As with many simple things, quality conversations are easier to preach about than they are to implement. High quality conversations require skills, self-awareness, a supportive environment and time. More than anything, they require each of us to believe that they are important, to pay attention to them and commit ourselves to improving them.
Some questions for you to consider this week:
How good are the conversations that your team is having at the moment?
What are the conversations that your team is NOT having at the moment?
What is one thing that you can do to improve the quality of your team's conversations?