PDF Summary:Conversational Intelligence, by Judith E. Glaser

Do you ever wonder why you struggle to connect with certain co-workers or why your team or department doesn’t run as smoothly as others? Organizational anthropologist Judith Glaser argues this is likely due to a lack of conversational intelligence, an understanding of how important conversations are to effective teamwork and how to infuse conversations with trust. While conversational intelligence is missing in many workplaces, Glaser believes any leader can develop this faculty using a few key tactics, thereby improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their team and making employees happier and more at ease.

In this guide, you’ll learn about the importance of conversations to human growth and success, and what defines a “good” conversation. You’ll then learn how to deploy conversational intelligence and avoid dialogue-killing distrust. Along the way, we’ll supplement Glaser’s ideas with ideas from other conversation specialists and provide more detail on how to implement some of her suggestions.

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How to Become Conversationally Intelligent

Let’s now discuss how to become more conversationally intelligent and foster more trusting dialogue in the workplace. We’ll cover seven techniques that Glaser recommends can help you do this.

1: Help Employees Answer Five Questions in Every Conversation

To establish trust right away in the conversation, you must be aware that everyone unconsciously asks themselves five questions about the person they’re talking to at the beginning of every conversation. These questions are related to whether or not they can trust the other person. As a leader, whenever you talk to an employee, be sure that their answers to these five questions indicate a positive attitude toward your organization.

1. Do I need to protect myself emotionally and how?
2. Does this person like me, and can I trust them?
3. How am I a part of this group?
4. What do I need to learn or acquire to be successful in this moment?
5. How can I work with others to create and build something?

How to Help Employees Positively Answer the Five Questions

Glaser says you must ensure employees can answer the above five questions positively, but she doesn’t indicate how to do so. Let’s go over each question and propose how you might help the employee answer it in a positive way.

• Do I need to protect myself emotionally and how? Ensure that employees never feel they must protect themselves in a conversation by devoting your full attention to them when they speak and expressing your appreciation for the work they do.

• Does this person like me, and can I trust them? Simple actions like making eye contact and mirroring body language communicate that you like your employee on a personal level, which lets them trust you.

• How am I part of this group? This might be as simple as bringing together your team in a casual setting so employees can get to know each other and understand where they fit in.

• What do I need to learn or acquire to be successful in this moment? This might be a matter of framing conversations for the employee. Doing this lets the employee know what’s about to be discussed and why, and they can decide how they can successfully participate in the conversation.

• How can I work with others to create and build something? You might clearly communicate the purpose of your organization to help employees understand how they can pursue that purpose alongside colleagues.

2: Identify Your Blind Spots

As a leader, you must be aware of and work to resolve your conversational blind spots that prevent the other person from trusting you, writes Glaser. Conversational blind spots are cognitive blocks in the way we see the world and perceive others, which can negatively affect how we interact with them.

(Shortform note: While you’re working on conversational blind spots, it might be helpful to also examine if you have other, general blind spots that affect your ability to lead. Such blind spots can be fear of asking others for help and not respecting the time and needs of employees, among other things. You can combat these by soliciting honest feedback from peers.)

Here are four conversational blind spots:

Blind Spot 1: We tend to believe others feel and think the same way we do. If we aren’t open to the possibility that others think differently, then when others disagree with us about an issue, we’ll try to convince them we’re right. This leads to the other person feeling bullied or strong-armed and prevents them from trusting us.

(Shortform note: Glaser mentions these four conversational blind spots but doesn’t always indicate how to avoid them. To combat Blind Spot 1, you might develop empathy, which Brené Brown defines as the capacity to understand what someone else is feeling and to feel that, too. Empathy will allow you to appreciate that others have different opinions and feelings than yours.)

Blind Spot 2: We aren’t aware that fear and distrust affect how we react to situations. As we mentioned above, distrust makes you create and reinforce incorrect mental narratives about others. You might thus react to them based on your mental narrative and not based on what they’re actually saying and doing. What’s more, distrust and fear keep you from taking others’ perspectives because you’re on the defensive. You become unable to put yourself into another’s shoes, which makes it hard for them to trust you.

(Shortform note: To know when you’re afraid or distrustful and when those feelings might be impacting your actions, tune in to your body to detect the physical symptoms of fear. These might be an increased heart rate, fast or shallow breathing, sweating, or trembling. If you’re feeling any of these, it may be a sign that you’re afraid and that you’re seeing your conversation partner in a negative light. Consider taking a break from the conversation to allow your fear response to cool.)

Blind Spot 3: We’re not aware that our memories of a conversation are subjective. The way we recall a conversation might not be what truly happened, and if we act only based on this subjective reading of a situation, the other person feels they can’t trust us to be open-minded and accepting.

(Shortform note: It’s true that memories are subjective and don’t necessarily reflect what really happened. This is because, when your brain creates a memory, it fills in gaps in that memory—moments or bits of conversation you didn’t store in your mind—with fabricated, assumed information. For instance, if you didn’t store how your co-worker greeted you this morning, you may fabricate a memory in which they greeted you in a rude way. If you assume that’s an objective truth and not a fabrication of your brain, you’ll likely be rude to them in return, reinforcing a cycle of distrust.)

Blind Spot 4: The listener may misinterpret what the speaker said. Meaning can be lost or misinterpreted between speaker and listener, so both parties must check in at the conclusion of an interaction to ensure they’re on the same page.

(Shortform note: One way to check in at the conclusion of an interaction—or to fix a misinterpretation—is to use what the authors of Crucial Conversations term contrasting. This is expressing your intention in an “I do/I don’t” statement, as in: “I do need the document by the end of the week. I don’t need it to be perfect.”)

3: Control the Context of a Conversation to Maximize Trust

To encourage trust from the start of a conversation, control the context in which you hold it, says Glaser. She refers to this as priming the other person—and yourself—to be trusting and open. You can prime both individuals and groups for more trusting conversations.

One-on-One Meetings

For individuals, Glaser suggests you create a context in which you can be warm and receptive to the other person by holding a warm beverage or sitting in a comfortable chair in advance of a meeting. Warmth and comfort signals your brain to be more receptive and open.

(Shortform note: You can even mimic the feeling of warmth by painting the walls of your office a warm color. This simply makes it seem as though the room was warm, which has the same effect on your personal warmth and receptivity as being physically warm.)

You can also control the context of the conversation by changing the physical setup of the space so that it doesn’t signal that you’re at the top of a hierarchy. For instance, you might sit side-by-side on a couch with your employee, rather than across from them at a desk, which gives the physical impression of authority over the other person.

(Shortform note: If you’re serious about avoiding hierarchical relationships and improving communication at work, consider doing away with executive offices entirely and implementing an egalitarian organizational structure. All employees and leaders could have identical workspaces that prime employees to see leaders as equals and thus to trust them more.)

Glaser’s final recommendation for a one-on-one meeting is to always first shake hands with the other person. This makes your brain release oxytocin, which lets you feel connected to the other person.

(Shortform note: Historically, the handshake was a way for two people to show they weren’t concealing weapons and meant each other no harm. The peace-making symbolism of this gesture coincides with its neurological impact of making you feel connected to the other person.)

Group Meetings

To encourage trust among groups, begin meetings with a trust-building exercise, writes Glaser. She proposes an exercise in which you ask everyone to suggest rules that will lead to the best conversation and write those down on a whiteboard. When you do such exercises, you signal to the amygdala (the fear center of the brain) that there’s no danger.

You can also foster trust at a meeting by sending out the agenda ahead of time so participants can propose amendments. Once you’ve received the amendments, send a revised agenda. This helps people to feel that their opinions and needs are valued, which makes them more trusting.

(Shortform note: Building trust is particularly important and challenging in virtual meetings, in which members may have never met in person and so have not had the chance to establish trust and connection. You can foster trust by clearly framing the purpose of the meeting so everyone knows what type of participation is expected of them. Sending out an agenda or questions ahead of time, as Glaser proposes, is also a good strategy to encourage people to open up in a virtual meeting. Finally, ask your opening questions in the chat, which lets people participate in the conversation with little pressure.)

4: Ask Open-Ended Questions

Another way to establish trust is to ask open-ended questions which make the responder feel valued and willing to speak openly, writes Glaser. Closed questions are ones that can be answered with just a “yes” or “no,” or that are really statements disguised as questions, to which the asker is expecting a specific response (“The company should move in this direction, don’t you agree?”). Open-ended questions, in contrast, don’t beg a specific response and can lead to discovery and learning (rather than confirmation of what you already think). They also help you understand the perspectives of others, allowing you to lead more effectively.

For instance, open-ended questions might be: “How do you feel about this direction for the company? What fears and hope do you have around it? Do you see yourself thriving here in the future?” Such questions encourage the other person to think about their response and to feel they can freely share their thoughts—which increases their trust in you.

(Shortform note: Asking open-ended questions is an essential part of coaching employees, a process Michael Bungay Stanier describes in The Coaching Habit. This suggests that by learning conversational intelligence, you’ll also become a better coach. Stanier describes seven specific open-ended questions you can ask in general meetings with employees to become a better coach. For example, “What do you want?” or, “How can I support you?” These questions encourage trust and understanding in a conversation, no matter what the context.)

5: Explore the Other Person’s Experience to Better Empathize With and Trust Them

In any conversation, you can bolster trust by engaging with and understanding the other person’s thoughts and feelings more fully. Glaser refers to this as “double-clicking,” because, like double-clicking on your computer to open nested files, you dig into a person’s lived experience. For example, you could double-click by asking about the other person’s work background and continuing to ask increasingly specific questions about jobs, companies, and roles they performed.

When you take the time to understand each other through double-clicking, you become bonded because you begin discussing shared perspectives rather than individual perspectives. This, in turn, fosters trust and lets you work together more effectively.

(Shortform note: In Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker proposes a different approach to understanding the thoughts and feelings of colleagues, or “double-clicking”: First, reflect on your strengths, values, and learning style. Once you’ve done this, share these reflections with your colleagues and ask them to share their reflections in turn. Be aware that they’ll all have different strengths and values. Drucker asserts that knowing these will allow you to work more effectively with your colleagues, even if he doesn’t specifically indicate this will give you a shared perspective. In this way, you’re not just “double-clicking” into someone else’s experience, but also your own.)

6: How to Use Conversational Intelligence to Reestablish Trust

To become an intelligent communicator, you should also learn how to reestablish trust when it’s been lost. Glaser says that if you find yourself or the other person becoming distrustful during a conversation, prevent further alienation by pausing the discussion. This puts a break on your amygdala’s fear reaction and the production of cortisol, so you don’t continue to take actions and draw conclusions from a place of fear and distrust.

(Shortform note: In conversations that are becoming increasingly tense, one action you can take during a pause is to practice deep breathing. This has a physiological effect on you: It changes your blood pressure, thereby alerting your brain that it can relax. You could also view the situation through an optimist’s lens during a pause: See the benefits or humor in the situation, or think about how fun it will be to talk about it with friends later. When you do this, you’ll be more able to continue calmly with the conversation.)

However, if there’s been a more serious, long-term loss of trust, Glaser proposes using the following five steps to reestablish good working relations between people. These steps can be executed directly person-to-person or facilitated by a third party:

1. Be honest: Vocalize your fears to the other person. When you do this, you tell your brain that the person with whom you’re sharing your fears won’t harm you, de-escalating your fear response. It also makes clear to the other person what your fears are so they don’t misunderstand them. (Shortform note: In No Rules Rules, Reed Hastings argues that being transparent in the way Glaser describes also helps companies as a whole function better: When CEOs are transparent with employees, employees have the knowledge they need to make better decisions.)

2. Forge a connection: Build a relationship with the other party by connecting with them meaningfully and letting them know you appreciate their qualities. This lets the other person know they can trust you. (Shortform note: Humans are much more likely to like another person if they feel that other person likes them. What’s more, the compliments or kind words the other person pays us don’t even have to seem authentic or based in reality for us to still like them.)

3. Take their perspective: Seek to understand how the other person sees the world. What is their version of reality? Be open with the other person, and listen to them carefully.

4. Define success together: Define what success looks like for both parties rather than merely pursuing what success looks like to you. This creates a baseline of trust because you know you’re all moving toward a common goal.

(Shortform note: What happens if, in steps 3 and 4, you can’t get on the same page with the other person? In such cases, it might be best to explore switching teams. If that’s not an option, you could actually ask the other person what they think you should do when you disagree. You might say something like: “I’m sensing our approaches might not be compatible. What do you think we should do now and when this happens in the future?” This might soften up the other person and get them thinking more flexibly.)

5. Reflect on your assumptions: Once you’ve performed the above steps, reflect more broadly about the assumptions you and others made that may have led to this loss of trust and how you can close the gap between assumptions and reality. (Shortform note: It might even be helpful to keep a journal in which you describe incorrect assumptions and lessons you learned. This lets you track your personal growth, which has the additional benefit of giving you a confidence boost when you reread entries.)

7: Build Trust to Facilitate Company Change

You can become more conversationally intelligent specifically in the context of company upheaval by practicing three conversational rituals, contends Glaser. Change can be difficult for employees, but you can make it positive by involving them in the change.

(Shortform note: Change isn’t just difficult for employees; it’s difficult for everyone because humans are naturally inclined to resist change. You can help yourself adapt to change by implementing rituals similar to the conversational rituals Glaser mentions: Assemble a support group, allow for the possibility of failure, and motivate yourself repeatedly.)

These three conversationally intelligent rituals are:

1. Welcome push-back: Instead of quashing employees’ resistance to change, see resistance as a natural response to change. It’s important that employees be able to question a change before they accept it.
2. Create opportunities for employees to discuss: When change happens, people need reassurance that they’ll be OK—both personally and professionally. Creates spaces for people to have those conversations.
3. Tell the story of the change: To help people understand change, tell a story about it. People can absorb stories more easily than cold, hard facts.

A Contrasting Approach to Management: Scientific Management

These three conversationally intelligent rituals could be summarized as treating employees like humans. This means, for instance, letting them have opinions, letting them discuss their feelings with others, and communicating with them in ways that are easy for all humans to absorb.

This approach to management stands in contrast to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s famed scientific management, which became popular at the turn of the 20th century and led to a tremendous increase in factory productivity at that time. In scientific management, managers tried to find the most efficient way to complete work and then assigned the most suited employee to that task. In short, Taylor viewed employees as tools to be deployed as efficiently as possible in service of the company’s goals. He felt every employee’s work could be optimized using science, not emotional connection.