Leading Libraries Series: Leading for Dialogue
Holding a space for dialogue
Qualities in conversation. The values and behaviours that help to create a 'safe space'
As a capability, Leading for Dialogue is all about creating an environment for ourselves and other people to understand more about each other and our ideas, to learn to improve and, ultimately, to increase the quality, performance and effectiveness
of the work that we care deeply about.
We can use the idea of 'safe space' for conversation to help promote dialogue in our meetings, workshops and one-to-one conversations. As you may remember, Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety at work as:
'a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking'.
In a 'safe enough' conversational space, we can feel free to:
- ask difficult questions
- give constructive feedback
- point out failures and mistakes (including our own!).
Edmondson recommends that if we wish to build psychological safety in our work environment, we should:
Frame the work as learning (rather than just performance)
Especially when we are working in complex or interdependent circumstances, where we need everyone's perspectives, opinions and ideas, to diagnose problems and come up with creative solutions.
Acknowledge our fallibility
Admit mistakes and say when we don't know the answers
Model curiosity
Demonstrate interest in people's views, ideas and feelings. Asking good questions not only widens the information available but encourages others to inquire as well.
Psychological safety and dialogue
While psychological safety is an important and wide-ranging concept, we can use Amy's idea to help us think about, and discuss, the kinds of interpersonal and group qualities that allow all the participants in a conversation to share their ideas,
talk about feelings and values and to challenge each other effectively. The model below gives one simple description of the qualities and behaviours which promote a sense of safety and allow for deeper dialogue.
Proactive qualities
Proactive qualities help us to 'show up as ourselves in the world' – they are the qualities and behaviours we need when we want to focus on ourselves and our own agenda and make that agenda more accessible to other people.
Direct
When we want to be proactive about a task or an organisational issue we can use the quality of directness. We can ask ourselves: 'How open am I being about my agenda my intentions, my position, my opinion?'.
If we are demonstrating directness effectively, we are able to:
- disagree with people in an effective way that generates conversation
- feel safe to challenge thinking – our own as well as others'
- state our position and our priorities clearly with others
- be comfortable to offer feedback
- reveal our thoughts and ideas (as well as our challenges) to other people
Vulnerable
The other important quality on the proactive side is vulnerability. Demonstrating vulnerability is still about showing up more of ourselves, but it is more about revealing aspects that feel a bit more personal rather than simply professional. Of course,
this doesn't mean sharing all our emotions and secrets so how do we strike the right balance at work? We might, for example:
- admit to not knowing something. "That's the first time I've heard that". Or "that's not something I'm very familiar with". Or "we don't have experience in this, can you tell me more"?
- share a personal impact that something has on us - why we feel so passionately about something, why we care
- share relevant information about who we are as people, the experiences we've had, so that people understand more about our opinions, ideas, or how we show up at work
- ask for help. Asking for help from colleagues, is an act of vulnerability, it's admitting to not knowing and also stating a need that you have.
As a leader, showing vulnerability makes us more accessible, and available as a human being. And it encourages others to do the same – to admit mistakes, to own up to a learning need or to get help when it is needed.
Receptive qualities
Receptive qualities help us to draw more out of others, when we're in dialogue with them. If we are able to demonstrate these behaviours, we make a space for others to share themselves, to be open and to bring their best contributions to the shared
work.
Curiosity
When we are aiming to create an atmosphere of learning and information sharing at work, the most important quality is the one that Amy Edmondson most emphasises – curiosity. How does this show up? We can :
- ask open questions - not leading questions, but questions that genuinely allow the other person to share their thinking. For example, "tell me about a time when…". Or "I'd love to hear more about this, can you say more?"
- seek to learn from mistakes - own up to mistakes that we have made, and share them with other people and get curious about what we could do next time
- ask for feedback from people drawing out learning from others.
As Edmondson describes, the quality of curiosity helps us frame our work as learning. It allows us to recognise that, in complex situations, we're not here to get everything right, first time around – that just isn't possible. But if we dialogue in
the spirit of learning, then we can continuously improve and create an environment where we learn together.
Appreciative
The final quality that really supports creating an environment of psychological safety is the willingness to be appreciative. People in organisations will often talk about valuing a lot of their colleagues and the expertise around them – but we may
not always demonstrate our appreciation openly, perhaps because it doesn’t fit with our national or organisational culture. Behaviours that demonstrate appreciation might be:
- making sure we include everybody in the dialogue. Do we notice everyone who's present? Do we invite people into a conversation and value their contribution?
- show we value their contribution. Do we thank people? Do we acknowledge them either by name or by eye contact
- proactively offering help - offering help is a way of demonstrating that you've seen somebody, you acknowledge that they have a legitimate or valid need, and that you're in on it with them
Relationships between the qualities
If we establish an environment of appreciation, then this has a really great benefit in terms of the other quadrant directly opposite it, which is directness. So if people feel included, valued and appreciated as a general base level in a conversation
or an environment, then it becomes a lot easier to challenge people's thinking, because it doesn't feel personal. People know that they are fundamentally safe and valued in this dialogue or in this environment. And that means that it feels okay
for them to state their position, to offer feedback or to challenge thinking.
The same is true for vulnerability and curiosity. If we show leadership by admitting that we don't know everything, or sharing our personal feelings or asking for help, it creates an environment where it feels more permissible to be curious to ask
questions, to share mistakes, and to learn from others.
Pause for reflection
Which of the four conversational qualities are you strongest in? Which behaviours feel most comfortable and familiar for you?
Which quality do you most need to develop? What behaviours could you experiment with to demonstrate that quality more fully in your conversations?
Consider a recent group conversation that you participated in. Which ‘quality’ showed up most effectively in the conversation (Directness, Curiosity, Vulnerability, Appreciation)?
Which quality or (qualities) were most absent?
What behaviours could you have shown that would have brought that quality in?
How might you use this learning next time you are with this group?
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