Meaningful Conversation

A big factor in the effectiveness of any meeting is the attitudes of the people within it.

One person who has done a lot of work in understanding how the attitudes people adopt within a meeting can affect the quality of dialogue and the overall effectiveness of the meeting is Otto Scharmer of MIT. He has developed an ‘Inner Condition’ model which helps people to become mindful of their own perspectives and motivations, and whether that is leading to the conversation becoming more open and emergent, or more closed and polarising.

It is based on a picture of ourselves which is reflected in the diagram below.

The idea is that, in conversation, if we monitor our inner condition, we will become aware that we are tending either to:

Or we maybe somewhere along a spectrum between the two. And that as we sense we are moving toward one end or the other, we will have a corresponding effect on those we are talking to, and that can either tend to open the conversation up to new possibilities or close it down into established positions.

Clearly, in developing insight and ownership in yourself and in your colleagues with whom you are meeting, tending toward green is far more productive than tending toward red. However, in the detail of the meeting it is easy to lose sight of our own attitudes. All too often, as the pressure of the meeting intensifies, people both drift to the red and at the same time lose their awareness of having done so. As a result, their contributions promote similar reactions in others, and at the very point that the meeting most needs creativity, insight and understanding, those qualities are at their least available.

Taking quick pulse surveys of meeting mood provides useful checkpoints for the group to collectively monitor where they are in terms of their inner condition.

Taking a few seconds to provide feedback enables people to lift themselves out of the detail of what has been going on and to take a meta-level perspective of the process and their own part in that. The ability to immediately observe the results enables the meeting to consciously and collectively move past any red that has developed, and for individuals to reset their own individual thinking back to green.

As Thomas Jefferson observed – ‘The price of freedom is eternal vigilance’ – we will only be free of the ‘red’ if we are continuously mindful to monitor it within ourselves.

For more information on Otto Scharmer’s work, take a look at his website.
See also Bringing the best version of yourself …