Conversational Intelligence®
Did you know that there are three distinct levels we can leverage in Conversation with each other? As we started to understand the concepts included in each of the three levels, we found that we’d unwittingly been using only Level I Conversations (Transactional) almost our entire lives. Either we’d started these conversations with others ourselves or the conversations were thrust upon us by others – with some not-so-great outcomes either way.
Unfortunately, our tendencies to default to Level I Conversations lead us into some very high stakes games that never had to play out as they did. But it’s in learning how to become more collaborative and co-creative, and have more co-regulated conversations that we learn the power of Level III Conversations.
As leaders of, and members of teams, we know that sometimes our discussions get out of hand. We’ve been in or around C-Suites often enough over our years in business to watch some incredibly tough scenarios play out:
- Leadership Team Meetings that get so hot that team members come storming out of their conference rooms, slamming doors, and storming off down the hallways – and with significant problems that still needed to get resolved.
- Witnessing how a “Cooling Off” period works well to still hearts and emotions before heading back into the fray.
- Tempers so hot that people picked up their belongings and exited the building.
- People screaming and yelling at each other – from across an entire building length in an open office environment.
- People slamming doors so hard that the doorknob went flying through the opposite wall, making a nice, round hole in the plasterboard. (By the way, this one happened numerous times in one particular company, with the resultant patching of the wall being the final step of the process – multiple times.)
What if we told you that these types of scenarios need never happen. (Except the Cooling Off period – that one’s legit!) We have the ability to understand how to move our Conversational Needles all the way to Level III, where Transformational changes happen.
Learn how to navigate from a Level I conversation (Transactional) into a Level III conversation (Transformational) where breakthroughs can happen inside your teams by using the principles of Conversational Intelligence®. As teams learn how to mature, our conversational exchanges should mature with them, yet so many of us live without understanding that we have an undeveloped and often harming style of conversation that rip our teams apart instead of infusing them with the good that we long to give.
Join us as we use Judith E. Glaser’s life work surrounding Conversational Intelligence®, embodied now in the CreatingWE® Institute’s brain science to understand how we can co-regulate our conversations to have better outcomes in all of our relationships. Our abilities to up-regulate or down-regulate our conversations especially during stressful times may have more to do with neurochemistry than it has to do with the words we choose, the tones we take, and the body language we portray inside every conversations. But words, tones, and body language – together – tell the world what we’re thinking inside even if we are paying careful to the words that we use in conversation.
We help you understand how to understand crucial discussions, and bring co-regulation into them. We help you understand the significance of neural transmitter chemicals inside everyday discussions that can turn toxic to your partners or employees What we give – and what we take – from our discussions inside our relationships can become cyclical and worrisome because of prior discussions or they can become the start of a positive future in all our relationships.
Inside C-IQ, you’ll discover:
- The three levels of conversation and their healthy use, as well as the unhealthy mindsets and blind spots that accompany them (see diagram to the right)
- The Five Conversational Blind Spots
- Our Amygdala’s Threat Response
- The Neurochemicals that infuse all our Conversations
- The TRUST Dashboard
- Managing Up and Down the Ladder of Conclusions
- Level III Behaviors
- Our Listening Benchmarks
- The Movies of Our Minds
- How to Shift Language from “I” Conversations to “We” Conversations
- How to Transform Uncomfortable Conversations
- Our Vital Instincts Dashboard
- The Wisdom of the Six Brains
You’ll learn how to deconstruct conversations after they happen to understand the meanings inside your relationships, as well as your fear factors that may inhibit relationship-building.
You’ll also learn how to repair relationships by transforming your conversations, while at the same time you are co-creating solutions with another person or an entire team. Trust – huge amounts of Trust – are the outcomes of learning Conversational Intelligence®!
Trust is the foundational aspect of building high-performing teams. If we aren’t building Trust, we are eroding Trust – there is no stationary level where Trust sits. It increases or decreases depending on the outcomes of each interaction we have with each other. We always want to be both Trustworthy (as seen by others) and Trusting (how we see others) in all our relationships. In our organizations and teams, Trust is built inside productive conflict and completion of tasks.
Harnessing Trust built inside Conversational Intelligence® gives teams and leaders new ways to move forward, where everyone is valued, and Co-Creation and Co-Regulation are by-products of a well-working and respected culture.
Margaret Ricci is a Level II C-IQ Accredited Coach, authorized to teach Conversational Intelligence by the CreatingWE® Institute. For more information on the CreatingWE® Institute’s work surrounding Conversational Intelligence, click here.
Quick C-IQ Glossary:
Co-Create:
When an organization or people are part of an internal and/or external stakeholder team that seeks to create a synergistic new product, service, or solutions that create mutual, shared success. This happens in complete cooperation between members.
Co-Regulate:
When two or more people offer warm and calming spirits inside interactions to continue to build relationship(s). It includes providing calming presences and tone of voice, verbal acknowledgement of each other’s possible distresses, modeling of behaviors that can modulate support, and the provision of an environment that supports emotional, physical, and psychological safety, even when discussing difficult topics.
Down-Regulate:
Providing an increased monitoring and modulation of a discussion between people, where one of them has had an emotional response; inviting others to decrease “Power Over” behaviors: Exclude – Judge – Withhold – Know.
Up-Regulate:
Providing an elevated emotional response to stimuli inviting others to increase “Power With” behaviors: Include – Appreciate – Share – Discover.