It’s time we had a little talk — about talking too much and forgetting to start a conversation. It’s one of the least discussed failures of senior leaders, and it needs to change.
Rather than begin with what a conversation is, let’s start with how it feels. Above all, a conversation feels equal. It’s an exchange in the truest sense, a shared back-and-forth, one in which who’s leading is irrelevant. When it’s happening, it’s something we viscerally sense to be valuable and vital.
It’s true in any realm, but its value to business is worth calling out: It’s core to problem-solving. Innovation depends on it. It’s fundamental to the effective management of risk, threat, change and human interaction. And that’s just the surface value. Fundamentally, conversation is where we build relationships that enable all the rest.
What is a genuine conversation?
Reminding leaders of the business value of conversations helps return their attention to this fundamental skill. But there’s far more. Genuine conversation is more than just a back-and-forth exchange. Feeling the pressure to lead, senior leaders often get stuck in ‘forth’ and fail to encourage and allow the ‘back’ and conversation to bleed into command. While frequently overlooked, informality is essential to equal exchange. An excess of control is the opposite of the collaboration conversation can yield.
Here’s something else we lose sight of as we rush to lead, especially in a fast-paced, tech-dominated work environment: conversation at its best happens face-to-face. Even if that face appears on video, if it appears — and better still if it’s periodically one-to-one, it trumps the email, text and memo form of most exchanges these days. Below it all is something that matters most of all: those twin pillar goals that make conversation powerful: understanding and relationship building. If they don’t guide the exchange, you’re just talking.
No doubt, understanding and relationship can increase the bottom line, yet the bottom line isn’t the point of conversation. Similarly, conversation isn’t about the answers it eventually can yield; it’s not about establishing power or telling masquerading as conversation. Those things fog our understanding of conversation, not to mention our ability to have one.
Conversation as “an adventure into the unfamiliar”
And then there’s this: pursued consciously, regularly and genuinely, conversation becomes what author, family counselor and psychotherapist Mel Schwartz describes as an adventure into the unfamiliar, the unguarded, and a place that allows the necessary uncertainty we need to grow and advance. In an uncertain world, we need conversation to leverage uncertainty to our advantage.
Why does all of this matter, now more than ever? Because today, conversation fights to exist in a deeply polarized world, one that infiltrates organizations, too. It’s hard to see and feels hard to fix, which is why sometimes we need to step out of this world and into another to see a way to change. Art is often good for this — here’s a story to help you go there.
Recently, I was traveling in the Faroe Islands, a place that feels both apart from where I usually live and yet smack dab in the middle of it. In recent years, the Faroes have become a lightning rod for controversy, specifically around whaling. The Faroes are not a whaling nation, and whaling plays no role in their economy. To most Faroese, it’s cultural, infrequent and yet central to who they are. Some animal welfare activists vehemently disagree, condemning the activity as cruel and pointless. Supporters say the activists are meddlers, even terrorists. Year after year, both sides have dug themselves ever deeper into their polarized positions, moving farther away from anything recognizable as conversation. It’s a dynamic Faroese artist Edward Fuglø sought to change.
In 2019, Fuglø pushed beyond the talk, creating a unique sculpture he calls Whale Wars. Now occupying the center of a room in the Faroese National Gallery, it’s more accurate to call it a conversation piece. At first look, it’s a 20’ life-size shape of a pilot whale (the type hunted once annually in the Faroes). It quickly becomes more. Most apparent, Fuglø used more than 32,000 plastic toy soldiers, all painted black, to create the shape, a direct yet subtle nod at what the exchange about the whale has become. Going further, he’s placed the whale on a 20’ x 4’ x 4’ rectangular block painted in alternating black and yellow stripes. Fuglø consciously avoids the color red (often associated with anger, war and blood), instead sending a message of caution — not to any one side, but to all. Red is a signal to stop. The caution colors intend to draw you in. So do the voices.
Leaning in and listening
Walking around the whale, it speaks to you. Literally. If you listen and lean in, just as you do during a conversation, you’ll hear noises from a dozen tiny speakers hidden in the body. When you do, the noise becomes a mosaic of the people across the controversy, and even the sounds of whales and the sea. All of it is a call for pause and consideration — perhaps even conversation.
Fuglø is an artist — not an activist, politician, scientist or businessman. Perhaps for that very reason, he is able to step outside an intransigent situation and powerfully remind us of how to start a conversation — not lecture or declare a winner, but simply converse. His reminders? Come with true interest and an open mind. Let every voice be heard. More than just being open, arrive with humility and a willingness to hear and see anew. Listen more than you speak. And seek to understand and build — together.
Imagine senior leaders taking a similar approach. Were it to take place, the asset that costs nothing to grow becomes the core of the growth, innovation and resilience every leader today talks about. Rather than talk, it’s time to converse.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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