Authentic Conversations: Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jamie Showkeir, Maren Showkeir
Creator: Margaret J Wheatley
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 48723
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 209
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1576755959
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.45
EAN: 9781576755952
ASIN: 1576755959
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
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Product Description
Authentic Conversations takes a radical new look at the potentially transformational role of workplace conversations. Through over twenty-five years of work as organizational consultants, Maren and James Showkier have discovered that conversation has the power to create, sustain or change organizational culture. But much of the time the kind of organizational culture these conversations sustain is one that stymies growth and erodes commitment. The problem is an organizational culture based on a kind of parent-child model, with leaders treating employees as children who needed caretaking and protecting The Showkeirs advocate instead authentic conversations that are based on an adult-adult model. In these conversations participants tell the truth, let go of the illusion of control, and view each other as in charge of their own motivation. The result is a conversation revolution that creates greater commitment, real accountability for results, and improved organizational performance.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
We Must Be the Change We Want to See November 4, 2008
This book is challenging and provocative. It's not one you can breeze through because it has this unsettling knack for holding up a mirror and saying, "Hey look. There's something here I want you to see." The something it wants us to understand is how deeply our everyday conversations at work are riddled with a lack of authenticity and how that lack stifles engagement and personal accountability. As a result, business results are less than they could be.
At the heart of this problem is an enormous collusion--a pattern of parent-child conversations that have become undiscussible in daily life. These norms in turn create organizational culture. The Showkeirs' fundamental premise is if you want to change a culture you have to change the conversations--difficult and, in their view, dangerous work. To change those conversations we have to accept our complicity in them.
The book is broken into two broad sections. First the Showkeir's lay out their case for change. Then, the offer a set protocols for shifting those conversations.
The case for change starts with an identification of "relationships that don't work at work ". Specifically, they point out how the following conversations--holding others accountable, caretaking, coping with disappointment and colluding with cynicism--are so deeply engrained that we take them for granted. "In all cases, these types of conversations have a detrimental impact on the culture and the business", they argue.
The conversations rest on a set of "old" management assumptions that see people as objects, ignore individual freedom and will, use policies and procedures that ensure compliance and emphasize leaders and experts while ignoring those who work in the system.
Leaders who see their role as "holding people accountable (as opposed to them being accountable) and who seek to protect their organizations from the rough and tumble vicissitudes of the market place (as opposed to helping them understand those realities) are operating from an implicit parent child model. This model puts unreasonable expectations on the leader and creates dependency in those led. [Although the Showkeirs chose not to venture into a discussion of contemporary American politics, it was hard for me to avoid looking at their arguments in the light of how self interest seems to be trumping service on the public stage.]
The Showkeirs explore the power of cynics to sap organizational change efforts of vitality and momentum. They become, in effect, a black hole into which hopes for a better future disappear. Leaders who seek to protect people from disappointment by promising safe landings in all difficult circumstances create cynics.
The antidote to all of this is to promote an "adult to adult culture" in which each individual in the organization:
*Becomes the eyes and voice of the business
*Brings an independent point of view
*Is expected to raise difficult issues
*Extends a spirit of goodwill to the endeavor
*Creates business literacy in others
*Choose accountability for the success of the whole business
*Manages his own morale, motivation and commitment
These qualities propel an organization from manipulation to engagement. People in the organization are enabled, ennobled and empowered--by their own choice. Manipulative conversational practices like name dropping, hidden agendas, over promising, sarcasm and exaggerated optimism or pessimism are replaced by authentic ones. All of this requires that we remain vigilant to three levels that operate in any conversation: the content, others' emotional responses and our own emotional responses. To business that operate on the belief that "business is about logic and fact based decisions", these three realities are radical in their own right.
Having laid out their case, the last portion of the book is a "practical guides to conversations like:
*Facing a difficult issue
*Seeking an exception (a radical reversal of the common organizational practice that it's easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission)
*Proposing change
*Introducing a mandate
*Renegotiating an established relationship
*Initiating endings
*Dealing with individual performance
These types of conversations, done in a manipulative parent-child environment, tie people in knots. Done authentically, they create clear, clean communication which, in turn, drives business performance to higher and higher levels.
Talking Wisdom October 27, 2008
According to Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter of the Gallup polling organization, "The evidence is clear that creation and maintenance of high employee engagement, as one of the few determinants of profitability largely within a company's control, is one of the most crucial imperatives of any successful organization." Their research contained in this book (pp. 18-19) identifies companies with engaged workers have significantly less turnover, less employee theft, fewer accidents, less absenteeism, higher customer service scores, higher productivity and profitability, and earnings per share.
Authentic Conversations is about developing engaging relationships. Trust, engagement, and personal accountability grow out of the conversations we have within the workplace and elsewhere. This book provides an array of ideas and pathways to authentic, engaging conversations.
As a CPA, I enjoyed the insights provided in Chapter 3 "The Myth of Holding Others Accountable." It identifies as much as managers want to control and hold others accountable, their success is one-sided and failures abound. Understanding and true accountability flows from honest, meaningful dialogue that Jamie and Maren Showkeir demystify in this book.
In my opinion, leaders and followers who aspire to be future leaders should read this book. It provides a breath of fresh insights and strategies for success.
A Book for Workplace Change, And Positive Change at Home October 24, 2008
It's no secret that the best business books drive positive change in the workplace with admonitions about taking control by managing your boss, or using a positive mental attitude as a path to success at work or perhaps more directly, stop complaining and do something. Authentic Conversation is certainly a great business book. Clearly, if organizations would simply have adult relationships and conversations with their employees, HR departments might have more time to plan company picnics or catch up on their reading. After all, how much HR time is spent on boarding and off boarding employees who likely would not have left in the first place if they just knew how to talk to each other like adults and have authentic conversations routed in individual responsibility and self-awareness? How many conversations with our spouses, children, family, and friends skirt the real issues, avoid taking responsibility for our action, and without intent hurt those we love by simply not having the courage or wisdom to have a authentic conversation? This is a book that will show you how have these conversations in simple, well-constructed, measured language that is a pleasure to read. Take this book to work and let its message make working a whole lot more fun. Take it home and see how it changes your life. And in the end, that's the change we're all looking for.
Mark Morrow,
Alexandria, VA
A little gem October 16, 2008
This is a wonderful book. It is utterly straightforward and practical. In a thoughtful way, Jamie and Maren practice what they preach, articulating their message with graciousness, high integrity and clarity.
This is not so much a book of advice as a book of examples, organized in a way that helps us understand where we commonly stumble. In every chapter, there is a little gem that makes one wonder--"Now why didn't I think of that?" But that's the magic: they see through the fog of convoluted, sugar-coated, and manipulative communication. Then they articulate and demonstrate how to to do it better. I have already shared it with friends and each of us has already put the ideas to good use. It's a lovely piece of work.
Straight talk about work and relationships October 14, 2008
Authentic Conversations is a refreshing attestation of the power of authenticity in both work and personal relationships. It is not a typical book on how to get what you want from others.
Authors Jamie and Maren Showkeir provide alternative conversations that enable personal choice and commitment, rejecting manipulative conversations, parent-child relationships in the workplace, and holding people accountable--techniques that stifle engagement.
Thankfully, the book includes a section with guidelines and examples of how to apply the concepts of Authentic Conversations to everyday challenges such as how to confront a difficult issue, propose a new way of doing things, and create new possibilities for a relationship. Though not in the final section, a nice bonus is the practical model described in Chapter 11 for dealing with resistance, something we all experience in relationships whether at work or home.
The examples used in the book resonate so well as to make us wonder why we couldn't figure out these principles on our own. Likewise, the tools included are so sensible you'll find yourself itching to apply them immediately to improve your leadership abilities or strengthen your relationships with others. Leader or not, everyone will find this book a compelling guide for effectively interacting and working with others.
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