Excellent dialogue is a critical characteristic of high-performance teams, but it doesn’t happen as often as it should within organizations. Authentic dialogue is a process of thinking together and discovering deeper insights from each other to find greater truth. To facilitate this type of dialogue, you can take certain actions:
Be direct. Avoid the traps of passivity, discounting of the other person, redefining as a way not to answer questions, and – the most destructive of all – over-detailing. These are all dialogue blockers. Dialogue includes deep listening, and not just talking.
Use four sentences or fewer. When in a dialogue, use four sentences or fewer before letting the other person speak. If you can’t say what you want in this amount of time, you may be overloading their brain. You will not, of course, be able to address all the…