The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [80]
Agenda: agreed and circulated in advance
Fixed time frame: never too long, never after lunch
Venue: quiet, conducive
The right people: no timewasters
➺ Rule six: Keep discussion light and well-ventilated to weigh matters fully
The ideal chair doesn’t lay down the law but the shape of discussion, creating rounded decisions by speaking last, listening hard for what is not said, ruling against: rambling, tangents, grandstanders, monopolists, personal attacks, leading questions, debating stunts, dodging, negativity, shillyshallying. And for: mutual interests, uncovering assumptions, testing propositions, exploring alternatives, the devil’s advocate.
Wise business leaders would do well to recollect the example commended in Sir Thomas Elyot’s 1531 treatise, The Book Named the Governor: Belinger Baldasine, “a man of great wit, singular learning, and excellent wisdom,” counselor to the king of Aragon, who liked taking “doubtful or weighty” matters home. After dinner he would summon his servants and set a riddle wherein was craftily hid the matter which remained doubtful, would merrily demand of every man his particular opinion, and giving good ear to their judgements, he would confer together every man’s sentence.
In the meantime, savvy communicators will accept social influence for what it is: the engine of communication. They’ll do their utmost to wire into the network, to please the powerful, cultivate the weak, and prosecute their cause as persuasively as possible.
NEUROLOGICAL FIREWORKS
Otherwise known as brainstorming. It’s an unbecoming image—a cerebella blizzard, or hobnail-booted soldiers stampeding an unyielding cortex. My preferred definition is organized mind-funk: a conversation designed to open minds and bestir synapses and tempests of fresh ideas—not to reach judgments. Although it should liberate participants to say whatever pops into their heads, without structure it will puddle into buffoonery.
Tackling a product or concept, corporate communications expert Linda Conway Correll suggests listing:
1. Facts about it
2. Sensory observations (possible even if the “product” is as abstract as mathematics: think graph paper, protractors, curvy zeroes, fork-like fours, headaches . . .)
3. Experiences of it
4. Uses for it
Then do a spot of associative outreach, taking words from these lists to come up with fresh lists: things that share the product’s quality; things it isn’t like; combinations of elements to describe a new use for that product (for instance, a dog could, conceivably, be renamed a love-alert). Find points of similarity between dissimilar elements, mine these lists for weird new definitions of your product, and soon it’ll look very different.
But keep it snappy. Think pinball, not chess.
TYPOLOGY OF BORES, CHORES, AND OTHER CONVERSATIONAL BEASTS
NETWORKING NO-NOs Arachnophobia
Networking isn’t popular. Some sneer it smacks of corruption. But business turns on trust and personal relationships, and few hermits lead corporate takeovers.
Sally Morgan, one-time government fixer turned business adviser, denied exploiting contacts yet conceded, “It’s easy for me to pick up the phone.” And what is a contact but someone you can touch?
Networking is a posh word for knowing who to talk to and how to make them listen. It’s nothing new. Visiting, familiar to costume drama fans, could be a grave social duty. In 1801, decades before becoming Byron’s crabby Venetian landlady, Lucia Mocenigo trudged around Vienna on an exhausting mission of social work to restore family fortunes. She
diligently wrote down [names], together with their addresses, in a brown leather notebook that was to become her personal social registry. She used those initial introductions to gain access to other illustrious houses, and planned her courtesy visits dividing the city up by areas and neighbourhoods. She called on an