Great Discussion, Terrible Conversation

I've worked as a guide to numerous organizations, and on starting a consultancy among the things that I play close awareness of may be the way that people are speaking about what they are doing. I ask myself what sort of dialogue I am being asked to be involved in. I do this because I think that what people say gives me an excellent indication about how they might be thinking about what they're doing. For me talking thinking and doing are three facets of the same activity - thought shapes language and action, which influences further talking and thinking. This doesn't mean to say that the way people are speaking and contemplating the things they are doing is of necessity specific in their mind. Actually, individuals are usually totally and unreflectively absorbed within their conversations.In the vast majority of firms where I am invited to work, there is a predisposition towards action. Talk is viewed as a 'luxury'; people claim themselves happier with 'supply', and if I am asked to prepare a workshop or class activity I'm frequently enjoined never to allow it to become a 'talking shop.' In various settings I've seen the anxiety increase inside the class as soon as we start that the occasion will indeed produce some 'concrete outcomes', even though it is usually unclear precisely what outcomes people have in your mind and how they will know if they're concrete. High levels of anxiety will indeed begin to cut across the talk and shut it down, specially if the way individuals begin to talk sounds as though it may be critical of the present order of things. Where only positive talk is allowed to overdraw what I am saying, often there may be a conspiracy of positivity in a class. If things aren't as we'd like them they soon will be, and fairly than 'carping' we must tend towards an potential, the vision.I am not meaning to suggest that high levels or panic are intentionally made, or that there's a conscious effort on the section of administrators to close down dissent or criticism. What I'd say, however, is that in a few organisations there is what I would call a heroic narrative about what the operation is doing. A daring narrative develops when people in a organisation highly cleave to the idea that the future is expected and the specific future the organisation has chosen is possible only if people are determined enough, and that 'performance' can improve relentlessly year on year. If it appears that many people are suggesting they've concerns then it could induce a very powerful counter-reaction, not merely from administrators. Those that improve criticisms themselves chance criticism.One means of understanding the tendency to over-plan organisational activities, and to try and constrain opportunities for 'only speaking' is really as at least a admission of the potential for speak to disturb the status quo. You might say then, people who are troubled such conditions are actually very wise: talk can be wonderfully identity-threatening and can pose a challenge to current power relationships by calling the present orthodoxies into question. Much safer then to concentrate on outcomes, goals and 'deliverables', the basic and professional-sounding language of Timeslips. Quite often professional facilitators and consultants are asked to collude with this specific means of proceeding. A good facilitator is a person who moves your day along smartly with games and activities in order that everyone is completely occupied. At the end-of the day s/he may deliver what're known in the trade as 'pleased sheets', forms which profess to exhibit how content people are with the day. Low results, perhaps denoting the folks have been baffled, made unpleasant or perhaps pushed, are thought to reflect poorly on the facilitator. People just haven't been made happy enough.A second group and opposite trend in organizations will be to genuinely believe that talking can only be considered a good thing. There have been a number of popular books written during the last decade indicating that when folks are urged to have 'good discussions', then good and transformational things will happen. This occasionally leads onto the theory that if we could discover the maxims of why is for a 'good discussion' then we could become more certain of experiencing the kind of positive change that we're looking for and promote openness and transparency. Again to overdraw the states for 'good conversation', it's often suggested that conversation is the simplest way of putting away or accounting for power relationships.As a person who uses a large amount of time encouraging team in organisations to speak and reflect more, I am generally sympathetic towards the idea that conversation may be transformational. But, I am far more sceptical that it can necessarily be turned towards 'good' transformation, whatever we would mean by that (and it often only means transformation that I or my team think is good). One of the fascinating points about discussion, about talk, is that it can develop spontaneously and unpredictably between people. While it is impossible for conversation to create only anyhow, since we shall, to a or lesser degree notice politeness, turn-taking and generally tacitly, power relations, it can take doubtful twists and turns and call out strong emotions as I referred to above.What I would question about the second tendency to treat interactions is that it falls into a similar capture towards the first. Instead of instinctively knowing that we do not know where talk might lead therefore it must certanly be controlled, the next habit suggests instead that we could 'control' the radical unpredictability of talk for ends that we do want, possibly ends that we might all desire to such as higher justice and equality between people. Who may be against that?Earlier I mentioned that we are usually uninformed of the way we're thinking and speaking even as we go about describing world we think we occupy. All we feel we are doing is explaining the planet because it really is. The way we discuss what we are doing causes it to be feel typical to us and we mostly feel comfortable on earth that we produce. At the same time as we discuss the world into existence with others we are designed along the way - we become who we are in dialogue with others. Here is the way ideology works: it is a of talking about the world as if it were the only real way of talking about it and making it seem very normal. It makes the organizations to which we feel we belong. I am not trying to say that ideology is somehow a bad thing, rather I am saying that we're all ideological in how we create the world with others.Both ways of understanding talk described above are two distinct manifestations of ideology and both attempt to instrumentalise talk, that is to say, use it as a tool to obtain an end. In the first situation, talk is implicitly recognized as potentially dangerous and must be steered towards the good. People ought to be made happy, secure and comfortable - one way of understanding this really is that additionally, it maintains current power relationships. In the next case talk is explicitly understood as perhaps transformational, but we might be able to harness this potential towards ends, possibly even ethical ends, which we've identified ahead of time. Here talk is represented as emancipatory through letting greater 'openness and transparency.'In my watch talking, and, more, reflection on how we're talking, carries with it the potential to create more specific to us how we're thinking and how as a result affects activity. By seeing how we're talking we produce the possibility of talking differently. By inquiring ourselves why things are the way they are we are calling into question power relationships. How are we creating the world where we are engaging, and how could it be creating us and our associates? What do we mean by what we say? In talking the way we're excluding others, how are we including some, and talking? How is my self continual and possibly transformed inside the experience with other selves?However it's very important to recognize the significant uncertainty of this kind of reflective talk, its prospect of both formation and destruction. There's nothing inherently 'good' about conversation - in talking, and talking about how we are talking, we're going for a risk and ethically we must live with the consequences. We should continue to question more, if we begin to question. There is no stop stage, no 'deliverable.' Trying to probe who we are and what we are becoming may make us quite uncomfortable.