WHY GROWING THE QUALITY OF CONVERSATION MATTERS…
GROWING THE QUALITY OF CONVERSATION
In today’s high-pressure environments, the emphasis is often on getting things done, finding a ‘solution’. With pressure, defences tend to be heightened and psychological safety low. It’s easy to avoid or step around the conversations necessary to reveal and explore underlying issues and enable change. Potential consequences include people disengaging, overt conflict, poor team dynamics, collaboration not happening, circling around on sensitive topics…the list goes on. The good news is that people can learn to engage with others about what’s really going on, where things need to get to, and how to get there – and to do so in ways that are safer, clearer and more authentic.
SAFER
Speak up with greater safety
Gain confidence and skill in speaking up while reducing risk and threat for yourself and others.
CLEARER
Avoiding Misinterpretation
Learn to express yourself more clearly while minimising misinterpretation and misunderstandings – and help others do the same.
MORE AUTHENTIC
Being Yourself
Share more of what’s true and relevant for you while staying engaged with others.
Conversation is Key to Enabling Successful Change and Different Behaviours
Think of the things that get in the way of healthy workplace cultures, productive working relationships and successful change: misunderstandings, unresolved conflicts, people avoiding difficult issues, poor behaviour that goes unchallenged, no-go topics…among others. One common thread is the quality of conversation.
While there are no magic bullets, it is possible to help people develop the mindsets and skills to enable higher quality conversations; conversations that are safer, clearer and more authentic, and that better enable change and other business and people-related outcomes.
We support businesses and organisations to help their people become more interpersonally effective, especially through learning how to converse about potentially difficult and sensitive topics.
And these are capabilities that your people can apply anywhere – at work or outside – with virtually any issue where there are differences of view.
People can utilise these methods with “big” conversations (multiple stakeholders and complex change-related and other issues), smaller yet potentially delicate conversations (e.g., when someone’s performance or behaviour inexplicably changes), or for giving feedback, including corrective feedback.
Users can even apply the same methods as an aid to self-reflection, the conversation you have with yourself.
Remember, better work conversations lead to better business results and effective change.
Grow personal and interpersonal skills for enabling change with our in-company course, ‘Change Conversations: Safer, Clearer, More Authentic‘. The course is also available in a healthcare version.
Welcome
Welcome from Don Dunoon, Better Work Conversations Founder
Key Points from Don Dunoon Welcome Video
- To achieve business and people related outcomes, how people work together is vital – and a key factor is the quality of conversation, in all directions.
- People at every level need to feel safe to speak.
- Research at Google in 2014 identified psychological safety as the biggest differentiator between the most and least effective teams in the company.
- Although you might think your organisation or group is different, defensive behaviour patterns are common, e.g., people reacting, judging others adversely or side-stepping difficult issues.
- Such patterns, which undercut safety, are likely to be especially prevalent in tough times such as we’re now in – think, e.g., pandemic-related pressures, economic worries.
- Yet it is possible to shift the dial, and help managers, professionals and others to create safer, more open and energized workgroup environments.
- They can learn to recognise defensive patterns – especially their own – and get better at communicating in ways that are safer, less risky and more open – helping others feel safer to speak, too.
- Importantly, your managers and professionals will be more able to achieve the cut-through needed to make progress on critical issues for achieving outcomes.
- These are the capabilities we help people develop. Welcome to the site.
You might object: “But We Have the Broader Area of People Skills Covered”
Maybe you’re confident this is so in your organisation. But are there risks that your offerings:
- Are oriented more to knowledge and awareness raising than deeper development?
- Cover lots of topics but without a unifying methodology for action?
- Look good and are well received but lack the power to shift attitudes and behaviours in a high-pressure business environment where psychological safety might be lacking?
If any of these points raise doubts for you, this is where we can add value.
Change Conversations: Growing Your Impact
Our Signature Course
Wellbeing, psychological safety and performance: all things critically important for organisations to cultivate in contexts of pressure and continuous change. A common thread is the quality of conversation. This in-company course is designed to assist managers and professionals improve their effectiveness and impact in these and other areas involving change, through engaging safely and productively with others.
Available in Foundations (6 hour) and Change Enabler (2 day-equivalent) versions, the course combines short, sharp and engaging self-paced learning modules and reflective exercises with highly interactive virtual (or face-to-face) workshops. The course can be adapted and customised for your organisation’s needs.
All managers and professionals need these skills!
Our Approach
Our approach centres on the OBREAU conversation model, developed by Don Dunoon. OBREAU is a composite of the first two letters each of three critical words:
- Observation
- Reasonableness
- Authenticity
Each of these are practices, and they come together as a strong structure, the OBREAU Tripod, that can be used to support conversation on virtually any topic on which there are differences of view. The OBREAU practices are each remedies, counterweights, to three default behaviours that tend to inhibit productive conversations:
Our challenge, in particular situations, is to move past these default responses and instead observe (notice as far as possible before interpreting), attriubute reasonableness to others (imagine their view, accepting it makes sense to them) and speak with authenticity (from the heart as well as the head).
At one level, these are simple ideas and easily grasped.
Yet, so are the rules of tennis. With tennis, it takes most players a level of training and/or coaching as well as ongoing practice to become adept.
The same is true with OBREAU. But once you do gain proficiency, you’ll potentially be able to ‘play a decent game’ with pretty much any issue you come up against.
One difference with tennis needs highlighting, though. With a sport like tennis, the objective is to win, defeat your opponent. With conversation and OBREAU, yes, we want to be influential, persuasive. But we also need to be curious and learn from those we are engaging with. Conversation is not just about ‘winning’; it’s not a game.
What People Are Saying
Sandy Pagotto is Director of Strategic Solutions with CHA Learning, part of HealthCareCAN (Canada)
Dylan Forbes is Director Leaderskill Group Pty Ltd
Participant 5
OBREAU is a practical framework to apply to change conversations… The framework enables structure and confidence to lean into change conversations whether small or large. Thank you again, really enjoyed the sessions and working through the model.
Participant 4
The Change Conversations course provided an insightful view into how best to approach not only conversations about change but also how to tackle any challenging workplace scenario. The OBREAU model, which is the basis of the course, is a straight forward guide to keeping conversations alive and robust. Don is an engaging facilitator and created a comfortable space for all participants to share thoughts and ask questions.
Participant 3
Don’s ability to engage and trigger thoughts around being more conscious and mindful about how we approach daily conversations is really effective. The online modules provide a healthy foundation for understanding some of the principles that can be applied… When combined with discussion sessions that he facilitates personally, it really allows for us to truly think about and spark a change in the way we think and act during these conversations.
Participant 2
The OBREAU principles helped me look at change management from a whole new perspective. The principles are relatable and can be applied to our personal lives as much as to our work lives. Thank you for introducing these to us and running the sessions.
Participant 1
I enjoyed the format of learning about the principles of OBREAU prior to attending the workshop and allowing the space for discussion in the workshop. Don was a fantastic facilitator of discussion and allowed us to bring real-life situations to the table and begin to unpack how we could apply the OBREAU method to help build psychological safety.
Gena Major
I experienced the effectiveness of OBREAU back in 2018-19 when I was involved in strained conversations with our union leadership regarding the introduction of a new technology for bus pre-trip inspections.
Using the method helped me better understand what was concerning the union leadership and aided me in gaining perspective on my own reactions, interpretations, and assumptions. As a result, I was able to engage with the representatives more positively than I might have previously. Beyond that experience, I can recommend OBREAU as a structure for illuminating almost any contested topic in a workplace and creating a basis for useful action.
I can vouch for Don Dunoon as a workshop presenter having seen him in action in his joint session at the World Conference on Quality and Improvement in Seattle in 2018. I presented on OBREAU with Dr. Rick Van Doel at the same conference, in Fort Worth, in 2019, and the participants seemed to share my view about the power of OBREAU.
Trisha Gott
Since 2019 I have been engaged in work with Don Dunoon and specifically, the OBREAU Tripod. For a practitioner committed to leadership learning through adaptive practice the OBREAU Tripod offered an avenue into adaptive work on the personal and organizational level. I have since shared it with students, faculty, and staff from across the university with great response. The tool provides a meaningful process and practice for navigating difficult conversations while maintaining commitments to adaptive practice and leadership.
Clare Drake
I have had the pleasure of working with Don Dunoon since 2017 in the leadership and management development space for our organisation with a focus on improving relationships through conversations and building leadership capability.
Don has a switched on and approachable style. In his sessions he listens attentively then offers questions or challenges according to what he has heard. The way he uses language, especially in the OBREAU Tripod model, to create understanding and raise the level of thinking in a group session is impressive. His level of knowledge in leadership and communication within the business context is exceptional. Match this with his ability to hold space for people to grapple with shifting mindsets from technical to relational and adaptive makes his approach a deep and enriched learning experience.
Exploring the OBREAU has been a game changer for many of the managers in our organisation. Having a majority technical and scientific workforce has sometimes meant the more human side of leading has been undernourished, which is why OBREAU has worked so well in our context. It has given a framework for understanding and a tool to refer to but also just to try and understand the self and communication on a different level.
The use of blended learning as part of the exploration of OBREAU has meant that the understanding has deepened, and practice enhanced because the participants can come to the workshops raring to go. I was able to be trained as a facilitator of these sessions and have only just finished leading my first cohort through. It was great to see how the online modules got people thinking first then in the sessions they were sharing of how they had been experimenting with the concepts and what had and hadn’t worked.
The feedback we continually receive from the programs Don has designed, delivered and worked with us on has always been a cry for “we want more”!
Human Resources Manager (New South Wales government agency)
Don has presented many leadership workshops with staff across my organisation to embed a culture of staff thinking about leadership and their role as leaders and how they can make a difference. I love it when I go into a manager’s office and they have a picture of the OBREAU Tripod on their wall or when a staff member tells me about a challenging situation where they framed their discussion around the Tripod.
I have attended many of the workshops as a sponsor and always learn something new and hear something I have never heard before. Don is nurturing and caring in his delivery, always working at coaxing involvement from the most introverted of staff.
Read more “Human Resources Manager (New South Wales government agency)”
About Better Work Conversations
Better Work Conversations is established by Don Dunoon, a Sydney based leadership and organisational development expert with 25 years-plus experience and a long-standing focus on the quality of conversation in work settings.
Better Work Conversations is fully owned by Don’s company, New Futures Pty Ltd.
Don works with a range of specialist consultant colleagues on assignments, depending on project needs and consultant skills.
For more information on Don’s background and skills, see his LinkedIn profile here.
