How to use meaningful conversation at work to drive the business
Why, when and how to hold more meaningful discussions among work colleagues
I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of conversations at work seem to be either dull small talk or simply transactional, if not sterile. What happens is that work gets done, but at a higher cost because little work is done on building strong relationships, fostering trust, and finding fulfilment. Instead, especially in the more anglo-saxon cultures, it’s all rather practical and pragmatic. Things that will make a difference will include the context and location (for example, a lunch, an off-site or at after-work drinks) as well as the company culture. If we are able to find the space to host more meaningful conversations on topics that matter, it’s very likely that the business will be in better long-term health. This includes the ability to talk about sensitive issues that involve personal history, opinions and engagement. It also means allowing for healthy debate among a diverse set of minds. In this way, we will not only get important work done, it will help foster a greater sense of belonging and dedication.
I remember as if it were yesterday, the business update meeting that we had scheduled for the morning of Tuesday, September 11. Yes, that one. The big boss had declared that, in spite of everything, the show must go on. The beginning of the meeting had been pushed back by a couple of hours, but at 11am, we were all sitting around the table. “We should leave the doors open so everyone can see what we’re up to,” he told the assembled executive committee. Several of us looked at one other, but no one immediately dared push back. Those employees walking down the hall who saw us sitting around the table in the windowless meeting room mostly shook their heads in disbelief. More distressingly, some sped by in tears. Yet, here we were talking about how sales were doing around the country. From my corner office on 46th and 5th Avenue, a couple of hours before, I had seen the first explosion and then watched the second plane fly down and into the south tower. Then, watched as both towers collapsed in front of my eyes. Our bulldog of a boss (with his smaller stature, was clearly channelling his Napoleonic or Churchillian-ness) was asking for confirmation of the month’s numbers. It was an absurd question during a surreal moment. At one point, his wife called in from Connecticut. She had an urgent question. His assistant patched the call through to the star-shaped speakerphone in the middle of the table. In front of our incredulous eyes, our boss proceeded to mockingly answer his wife’s dilemma: “in light of the attacks, should I stock up on dog food?”
In the captain’s mind, he was keen to show a stiff upper lip and steer us through the storm. In this case, it was merely a tone-deaf demonstration of a culture of work first, life last. Eventually, someone piped up and several of us chimed in with our support: we should disband the meeting and go take care of our teams and family. It was the right thing to do. With barely a murmur, we all went about our ways, mostly embarrassed for having shown such a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the events. That week provided something of a turning point in many ways for me, notably sparking a deeper need for purpose, beyond the sale of hair products to hairdressers. Much like during the pandemic, during the weeks that followed, the proximity with death made everything intrinsically heavier. For days, the conversation at work was dominated by stories of what had happened, who died or is missing, who was saved, along with the planning of many memorials. We also came up with an emergency contingency plan should there be a dirty bomb in Manhattan. In such an environment, talking about logistics and of the delivery of a showcard into the warehouse seemed so trite. Yet, we know we had to. As my dear friend, Pat, told me, he didn’t care if the color on the showcard was a little different from the Pantone benchmark. What mattered was execution and delivering on when you’d promised. It follows the principle of time is money. As explained in Ben Horowitz’s 2019 book, “What you do is who you are,” the value is in delivering according to your word.
“Well done is better than well said.”
- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1737
Actions speak louder than words. When you say what you do and do what you say, there’s integrity. This is when your personal North Star has alignment with what you do professionally.
In any thriving business, there is inevitably a lot of action and decisions to be made. Therefore, it’s perfectly normal that much of the conversation be around operational matters. But, if it’s only about doing, and there’s no time for being, the challenge is keeping the motivation and synchronization high across the board. Moreover, when (not if) things go wrong, you need to know how to handle the associated stress. Much like life, what matters actually is the strength of the relationships. These will not hold up in times of stress if the bonds are only superficial. To power through tough times requires mutual trust and a stockpile in the karma bank which you achieve by getting to know one another at a deeper level. In the long-running Harvard study (that stretches across 80 years), they found that only one criterion ever counted in having a long and fulfilled life: your relationships. I believe this kernel of wisdom is awfully relevant at work as well. Some will regard work as some kind of necessary evil, or that it should never be more than just a job. I disagree. In that life is short and you’ll spend between 26% and 40% of your adult life working (including the commute) up until retirement, you might as well make work a proper complement to the life you want — not just the money you make to have a life outside work.
Life is (hard) work and work is (part of) life.
Why bring meaningful conversation into work?
As much as it’s important to ‘do’ the business and bring in the numbers, there are some fundamental elements of work that go beyond competency and execution. All business is actually about relationships, which is why hiring for attitude is so vital. Every project requires a selection of profiles (e.g., from sales, marketing, finance, research and logistics) who need to collaborate with one another. The magic dust that makes those relationships work and encourages people to go beyond the call time and again is trust and the shared belief in a bigger mission (or purpose). Where old school executives are mistaken is thinking that trust need only be professional. In other words, you trust the marketing person to be good at marketing, the finance officer to be rigorous in all matters financial, etc. However, trust is personal. No matter how competent in his/her function they might be, if your CEO is a complete ass outside of work, that matters. If they’re an ass at work, then leave. I had a CEO who liked to say that we were all family at work. This very same CEO, who was married with four kids, had multiple mistresses whom, it turned out he didn’t treat well either. It makes you wonder what his definition of family is.
Having meaningful conversations at work is key because they allow you to connect with one another at a deeper level. By meaningful, I mean an exchange on a sensitive or important topic, where you share with one another your personal stories, convictions and values. To make it truly meaningful, is to have each person learn about and from one another. The more personal and more vulnerable, the deeper. However, just as when you’re with friends, there’s a limit to how far you go. For example, you may well not wish to share any intimate details, even with friends. Within a business context, the threshold is typically and necessarily higher. Nonetheless, to the extent you manage to uncover some personal ground, the connection is made and a form of trust will develop through it. And the kicker is that having these moments of connection is energizing. It’s up to each of us to identify what should remain in the private or intimate sphere and start getting comfortable with exposing your personality through your personal thoughts, beliefs and experiences.
How to determine the palatable topics?
There are certain topics that are more powerful and meaningful than others. However, as I’ve explored before, even a football match can have depth to the extent it relates to you at a personal level. So, it’s not always about the topic. Yet, there are some keystone subjects that are at once likely to be deeper, more personal and potentially more volatile, while also being important for your company. Here are five broad topics that invite a more personal commitment and that I hold are strategic for every company that seeks long-term sustainable growth. I note that it’s true that there may be elements of overlap. For each topic, I’ve set out some of the questions you might wish to explore if you haven’t already.
Culture. What’s the de facto culture of the company? Does everyone have the same understanding of it? Is it clear for everyone what are the behaviors, values, language and rituals that underpin your culture? What is tolerated, and what isn’t? What is the desired culture?
Ethics. Ethics are ineluctably personal, since we all have an internal measure of what is good and bad. What is your ethical framework? Do your internal ethics comply with your the way you operate externally? How will you hold each other accountable? How are your ethics being upheld in any Artificial Intelligence applications you are using?
Transparency. There are increasing calls for companies to be transparent (for example, about pay, as is now the case in 8 states in the US, and has been so for a long time in Norway, Sweden and Finland). How transparent do you want to be as an organization? Why and how far do you wish to go? What information do you deem to be top secret? To what extent will transparency bleed into your personal affairs?
Politics. Obviously, this is a hot topic and one of the three you’re NOT supposed to talk about (along with money and religion). However, in today’s world, staying mum about your politics can easily be construed as silent approval of things that are happening on the outside. Not that we need all to express political opinions on everything, but it’s useful — if not strategic — to think about your where you sit on certain political topics. What do you stand for? Why and how is this a key topic for you? Depending on your industry, and your employee and customer pool, some areas are more relevant and pressing than others. And, you better believe that politics is personal.
Purpose. What is the mission of the company that goes beyond the product or service that you provide? To what extent are you going to work with the larger community? How far are you willing to go to make your purpose come alive? Does your brand have an answer to this key question: how would the world be worse off if your brand didn’t exist?
At some level, these five topics are all about raising the consciousness of the business. There are other topics/areas that may be relevant to your industry, for example, what/if any cause marketing should you undertake? In any event, the nature of these issues is that they take time to mull over. They require a more personal involvement, space for debate and disagreement. And, on balance, they’re rarely if ever discussed at the board level.
When to hold a meaningful conversation?
So, you’ve identified a few of the key topics you’d like to address, but how and when to do so? Like so many of these types of recommendations, the answer inevitably depends… on situation, business, context, existing culture, etc. Here’s what I advise, though. Be intentional. Get buy-in from other members of the executive team. And then be disciplined. The reality is that these types of topics can be unwieldy. If you’re running a large company and do off-site meetings, that would be a perfect occasion to address a bigger issue. But, these can be broken off and brought down into more digestible sizes. The key is articulating the question or problem and linking it to your overriding strategy. You’ll need to be a little bull-headed about getting these conversations onto the agenda and not letting them slip off for a lack of time (as can easily happen). Maybe you can have one of these topics inserted in the monthly management meeting? Maybe you’ll want to start with a smaller committee, including the more influential members of your team. It will require determination and discipline to get the topics discussed, because this is as much as anything about change management. It’s far easier and more comfortable to stick to operational matters. If you’re the CEO of a larger organization or a publicly-traded company with a Board of Governors, I strongly suggest you make sure that the Board is having a similar debate as these topics are entirely strategic.
How to hold a meaningful conversation at work?
With the assumption that you’re leading the charge, you’ll need to be smart about how you introduce these topics into the workflow. And it will depend on the existing dynamics. Relationships, as I set out at the top, are key. The team will have a history and a context with which to deal. There will be members of the ExCom who are more sceptical, others who are supportive. There may be infighting and internal wrangling that can impinge on the good flow of conversation. It’s probably a good idea to talk with each member of the team in your one-on-one’s (even at a separate meal) to understand where they sit. Your role in modelling the behavior that will be required as you facilitate these conversations will be vital. Here are some principles to follow:
Ensure that the topic is clearly marked on the agenda and that the right people are invited to the meeting. This could include legal counsel, a client or an external stakeholder. To the extent the objective is to have a meaningful conversation, it’s important to give it the necessary time. A rushed, time-constrained exchange most often leads to more grandstanding or statement making. You’ll need to allow for a generous amount of time. If that’s not practical at the monthly meeting, then try every other month, or once quarterly.
Set out ground rules (see the starred items below). At the outset of each ‘meaningful’ conversation, make sure to lay out the ground rules. For example, you operate as a proper Board of Governors (which is hopefully always the case!). In a healthy executive committee meeting, if someone is invited to attend, it is with purpose. Everyone has the authority and should feel welcome to speak on every topic.
Start with vulnerability. As leader, it can be useful if you set the tone by showing your vulnerability and/or bringing in a personal story that underscores your personal experience and convictions.
*Be curious about everyone’s opinion. This is all the more important when you have invited a diversity of minds and backgrounds to the table.
Another core characteristic is humility, and not to have a fixed goal or outcome. In the ExCom, it’s not uncommon to have a lot of outsized egos. Especially if you want to encourage participation by all members, you must bear witness to the power of the collective. Allow for the conclusions to form, without imposing your will. And encourage civil but well-argued dissension, especially when it comes to confronting your ideas.
*Practice empathy and active listening. Try to understand where each person is coming from when they express their opinion. Ideally, enable and encourage each person to reach back into their personal experiences to explain their position. For the vast majority of the meeting, everyone will be listening, including you. A very useful tool is to reformulate back to someone what you heard them say, before interjecting or pursuing with your thoughts. Aside from allowing everyone to get a fuller understanding, it makes the speaker feel heard.
*Be factual. Whichever topic you choose, make sure to reinforce your knowledge with firm facts and figures. To the extent these topics can be emotional and trigger reactions, it’s important to be able to anchor the discussion in facts.
Be both meta and involved. You will want to participate in the conversation as a peer, yet always have an eye on the ongoing energy of the group. You will be the steward of the conversation (and time) and will need to make sure that all views are being exposed.
Next steps. Get the team to help summarize your discussion and agree to the next steps. Make sure that this is a collective work.
As much as these conversations require personal engagement and relate to emotional topics, they should still be at the service of the company’s strategy. To the extent the intention is to encourage more meaningfulness on an ongoing basis, as a leader, you will need to model the right behavior throughout, even during the informal encounters (i.e., when you are “off the ball”). This will include being careful on how you express yourself, give credit to others and rein in incivility or actions that break an agreed code of values. If you’re not feeling competent or distant enough, it can be useful to bring in a moderator/facilitator to help animate the discussion, someone who knows how to keep the flow and participation optimal.
To conclude, as we embark on tougher, more meaningful conversation in the workspace, I cite the wise words of the American economist and bestselling author, Thomas Sowell, who wrote:
”One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans—anything except reason.” [Source]
If we are able to find the space to host more meaningful conversations on topics that matter, it’s very likely that the business will be in better long-term health. This includes the ability to talk about sensitive issues that involve personal history, opinions and engagement. It also means allowing for healthy debate among a diverse set of minds. In this way, we will not only get important work done, it will help foster a greater sense of belonging and dedication.