Alison Haill believes the best way to build a successful business is through strong relationships built through good conversations. It’s common sense, isn’t it? Then why don’t our teams show us consistently high levels of trust, motivation and wish to collaborate? Why aren’t we flooded with orders and adoration from all our customers?
Written by Richard Rosser
Animated and passionate as ever, Alison is an executive business coach with a huge amount of experience transforming teams and leaders into more articulate, confident and effective versions of themselves. Here she explains why the work of Judith E Glaser on Conversational Intelligence (C-IQ®) is so exciting.
“Because we can now scan people’s brains and see what’s actually happening, we can see the real-time physical difference it makes when we are in different conversations. This seems to me an excellent way of convincing us all that we should watch what we say! Not that we should be scared of speaking the truth but rather so we can focus on creating better types of conversations in our business and personal relationships. The reason is not just to make people feel good – of course that IS important – but it makes business sense too because we can now prove that feeling good is linked to innovation.”
New discoveries, practical ideas
Alison Haill has worked with B4 for more than a year now. Over this time she has also been studying the ideas of Judith Glaser “to discover how we can use the findings of neuroscience in really practical ways to improve leadership and the workplace. Judith has done the legwork, testing her ideas and models with corporations and individual teams, and come up with solid models, advice and great strategies which work, and which I can now pass on to my clients so that they can benefit too.”
Alison introduced the B4 team to DISC profiling (see B4 Issue 46) which was an eye-opener for us. We found it invaluable to realise how different we all are, how different our preferences are and more of our strengths: it has made us more aware, and better at teamwork. Now Alison is introducing the C-IQ Conversational Dashboard which takes us further.
The Dashboard describes behaviour in conversations, as in a car dashboard where the needle moves from zero upwards. So, in a conversation you may start out being a Resistor or Skeptic, or as Co-Creator, depending on the subject under discussion. And your position may change during the conversation too, depending on how trust is built, what is said and how it is expressed.” The question then arises, how can we move people away from a Resistor or Skeptic position? How can we start to co-create better, new ideas?
Introducing change
“How often have you tried to make changes in your team or implement something new and met with resistance? If you haven’t, I’d question that because we’ve all encountered resistance at some stage with our teams. It’s natural – most of us don’t like change. But we need to find a motivating catalyst …. after all, a room full of Resistors will get you nowhere!
“A team meeting is a great breeding ground for ideas, innovation and change. It’s an opportunity to inspire and create ideas together.” But for an environment to be conducive to new ideas and brainstorming, trust is essential. Going back to when we were at school, some of us would refrain from putting our hands up for fear of ridicule if we said the wrong thing, or gave an unexpected answer. In an adult working environment, it’s no different – there has to be trust that we won’t be laughed at or picked on. Everyone has to feel able to make suggestions, even ones that may seem odd or even mad at the time.
Easier said than done. “This is where knowing how to build trust is fundamental to business success. If it is there, we can feel appreciated by our peers, and we don’t need so much courage to suggest something outside the box. It makes us feel our thoughts can safely be expressed and will be heard.”
Will I sound ridiculous?
“The pre-frontal cortex is the most sophisticated, most recent part of the brain and it’s where high trust lights up in the brain in an fMRI scan, as neuroscience findings show. When this happens, hormones are released in your body, the positive hormones of oxytocin and dopamine, that make you feel good and appreciated. You’re able to be much more collaborative, much more sharing when you are functioning in the trust part of the brain, more creative. And that’s what we want in good teamwork.
“On the opposite side of the scale, if you’re ridiculed or put down for saying something that sounds whacky or stupid, cortisol rushes through your system and that’s the hormone that is associated with stress, the flight-fight reaction. Of course, this is obviously a very simplistic description of a complex process! So I am sharing the Conversational Dashboard here because it encapsulates these processes in a very clear way so we can see the neuroscience behind our conversations and how we react to them.”
Are they like me?
Alison talks about the speed of the brain and our reactions, what we call gut reaction and instinct. “It takes us something like 0.7 of a second for our brain to decide if someone is like me or not like me, which then influences whether I’m pre-disposed to like them or not. Of course, this could prove to be a poor evaluation but that initial decision can impact on the trust building process, ifyou let it.
“We can get around poor initial decisions by using ice breakers, easy activities which get people talking, help them feel comfortable and open to knowing each other better. That’s the function of ice-breakers at the start of a workshop. Handshakes and small talk plays a role too, where we use easy subjects for conversation, like the weather or the frustration of the roadworks every summer. This starts to build shared experiences and primes the brain for trust building.”
Small talk plays a big role
Small talk conversations may seem empty or disingenuous to some, but younever know what you might hit on and then it’s a foundation for you to build on the next time you meet.
The impression you make on a customer’s PA can be as important as the impression you make on a new customer. We’ve all had the long walk to an office with a colleague of the person you are going to meet. Do you make small talk or walk in silence? The small talk has a purpose: it gives you the opportunity to shows up as a human being and allows you to find something – an opinion or topic – in common. It is a chance to open up a bit as a normal person while there is no big topic at stake. Besides, you never know what influence that person has, how important they may be in positioning you as a good person, one with integrity, someone to be trusted. Everything goes into the mix when decisions are made.
It’s no different if you talk to someone else on the phone when trying to reach your customer. Making a note of their name, asking how they are, making a point of saying their name when the conversation is over – it all helps. And as you get good at it, it doesn’t seem forced or contrived.
Don’t just listen, share
The point too is that listening is as important as speaking – you’ll see it is a key element on the Dashboard. When you listen, take on board, and refer back to what you took on board at a later date to show you have listened, it shows you care and that you thought the information important. You don’t know how much or how little, but this will contribute in some way to the relationship and your reputation.
So, how much time do you spend listening? It’s crucial to create a culture and environment where everyone feels they are heard. If not, you could be stifling an innovative idea, a hidden skill or a simple solution that others have overlooked. And how much information do you share? “What we haven’t known, but is now shown by neuroscience, is that when we are feel appreciated or respected – say, by information being shared rather than withheld – the trust centres in our brain light up. And it can be very quick. That’s when the positive hormones flow into the pre-frontal cortex and the other positive activities happen: the collaborative thinking, ability to be creative, more innovative, ready to take risks in sharing unprepared thoughts in a co-creating flow with others.”
Conversely, a careless put-down of “You don’t need to know that” can be much more destructive business-wise than we might realise.
C-IQ and Productivity
No company will be successful with a ‘just average’ team, let alone one that is workshy. That’s where clever conversations come into play. Using these ideas from C-IQ, a conscious CEO will manage their team more effectively, so the team is inspired to have pride and involvement in the company’s success. This comes back to the idea of co-creating. If you share a problem with the team and a team member comes up with the solution, that person and the whole team feel a sense of ownership for the solution and want to make it work. That’s going to give much better results in terms of the solution itself, as well as their teamwork and productivity.
At B4 we’ve been implementing these ideas with Alison and using her coaching to good effect over the last six months. We’ve already seen results in team motivation and involvement so I’m keen to implement more from C-IQ now that Alison can share the information.
We’re by no means the finished article, but we’ve learned a lot and her advice certainly pays off. Why not get in touch with Alison to find out how your business could benefit?
