30 Seconds to Make or Break a Conversation
According to recent research by VitalSmarts, organizations lose quite a bit of money, time and opportunity because people are afraid to speak their minds. 95% of employees struggle to speak up about concerns, and 8% of employees feel they waste more than $10,000 avoiding conversations. Those numbers aren’t pretty, so how do we go about solving the problem?
The folks at VitalSmarts have created a number of insightful books that, with training and intention, can help push those figures down. They offer practical steps on meeting our human need for “safe space” in dialogue and preventing conversations from going astray (if they’re had at all).
One key point: people tend to “do everything wrong” in the first 30 seconds of a challenging conversation. We somehow dive immediately into content and attack the other person, instead of showing we care about his or her interests and establishing an open dialogue.
But shifting this behavior isn’t easy. And 30 seconds can go by pretty fast. Even with training, it takes some major attentiveness and intent to make it happen.
One way to keep dialogue safety top of mind? A free poster for your conference room, courtesy of The Kitchen.
Here’s to more productive conversations!
Originally published at www.dangerouskitchen.com on August 29, 2013.
