Companies, careers built or lost one conversation at time - The Diigo Meta page

• 02 May 08
  

  Sheryl A. McCoy

  careers and conversation: it's a rocky road among the Machivellians

  conversation careers negotiation

• 01 May 08
  

  Darren Draper
  • The conversation is the relationship. If the conversation stops, all possibilities for the relationship become smaller and all possibilities for the individuals in the relationship become smaller, until one day we overhear ourselves in mid-sentence, making ourselves smaller in every encounter, behaving as if we are just the space around our shoes, engaged in yet another three-minute conversation so empty of meaning it crackles.
• 

  fierce

  • In Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," a character is asked, "How did you go bankrupt?" He answers, "Gradually, then suddenly."
  • Careers and companies succeed or fail, gradually then suddenly, one conversation at a time.
  • What gets talked about in a company and how it gets talked about determines what will happen. Or won't happen. Conversations provide clarity or confusion.
  • The most valuable currency
  • is relationship. It is emotional capital.
  • Each of us accumulates or loses emotional capital, building relationships we enjoy or endure with colleagues, bosses, customers and vendors one conversation at a time.
  • "This ongoing, robust conversation I have been having with my wife is not about the relationship. The conversation is the relationship."
  • The conversation is the relationship. If the conversation stops, all possibilities for the relationship become smaller and all possibilities for the individuals in the relationship become smaller, until one day we overhear ourselves in mid-sentence, making ourselves smaller in every encounter, behaving as if we are just the space around our shoes, engaged in yet another three-minute conversation so empty of meaning it crackles.
  • Incremental degradation -- if we compromise at work or at home, if we lower the standards about how often we talk, what we talk about, and most important, the degree of authenticity we bring to our conversations -- it's a slow and deadly slide. Meanwhile, the organization's strategy keeps stalling. Cross-boundary collaboration isn't happening. Leaders play whack-a-mole, micro-managing versus leading. Original thinking is happening elsewhere. Employees have little or no emotional connection to the organization and its customers. Relationships steadily disintegrate, one failed or missing conversation at a time.
  • It is the unusual leader who turns his or her attention to the conversations of the company; and yet, our leverage point, our fulcrum, is whatever conversation in which we are engaged at any given moment in time. While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a company, a relationship or a life, any single conversation can.
  • a careful conversation is a failed conversation because it merely postpones the conversation that wants and needs to take place.

  • What is the deepest issue in this confusion? Speak toward it, with firmness and concentration.

     
  • Let's engage ourselves there, and tell the truth as much as we can. There is something deep within us that responds to those who level with us, who don't suggest our compromises for us. You may try to say something trivial and find that you can't do it. You must speak directly to the heart of the issue.
  • What's the most important thing we should be talking about today?
  • What do we believe is impossible for us to do, that if it were possible, would change everything?
  • If nothing changes, what's likely to happen?
  • What's the conversation out there with your name on it? The one you've been avoiding for days, weeks, months, years? Who is it with and what's the topic?
  • When the conversation is real, the change occurs before the conversation has ended.
  • don't try to have important conversations via e-mail. The most powerful communications technology any of us will ever have is eye contact. The next is voice. Dead last is words on a page or a screen.

  17 more annotations...

• 09 Jun 05
  

  J Fielden

  communications

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