Authentic Conversations
Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment
By: Jamie Showkeir, Maren Showkeir
Published: 2008
Format: Paperback 215 pp
ISBN 9781576755952
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
"We hope to create in you an awareness of how daily conversations create, reveal, sustain, or change organizational culture", write co-authors Jamie Showkeir and Maren Showkeir, in their groundbreaking book Authentic Conversations: Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment. The authors' premise is that true and lasting changes to an organization's culture can't be made, unless people understand how traditional conversations prevent growth, and work to destroy commitment to the organization.
Jamie Showkeir and Maren Showkeir recognize that conversations are part of every organizational culture. Those conversations range far beyond the boardrooms, meetings, and the water cooler. They move outside of the workplace and into the very fabric of people's lives. The nature of those conversations reflect the company culture regardless of the level on the organizational charts. The right kinds of empowering conversations, found in healthy organizations, develop personal commitment and personal responsibility. In dysfunctional organizations, those conversations take on a tone of blame, care taking, and making others accept responsibility.
Jamie Showkeir and Maren Showkeir (photo left) understand that dysfunctional conversations take on the character of a parent and child relationship. Instead of a adult based collaborative discussion, that works to solve problems and to take personal responsibility for those decisions, the tone becomes one of avoidance of truth, paternalism, and removal of personal responsibility. Instead of working with employees to institute change and improvement, employees are left out of the decision making process. As a result, staff people become cynical about change, less committed to their work, and ultimately, the company becomes less productive.
For me, the power of the book is its direct approach to changing the conversations within an organization. The authors demonstrate how to recognize dysfunctional and traditional paternalistic conversations. Once those conversations are seen to fit the parent and child relationship pattern, the authors provide techniques for re-framing the conversation into discussions between adults. The resulting honest talk builds personal responsibility among management and staff. Instead of seeing the organizational responsibility as resting with others, all members of the company take ownership of the solutions.
I highly recommend Authentic Conversations: Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment by Jamie Showkeir and Maren Showkeir, to anyone seeking to make real change in their conversations within their organizations. By recognizing that everyone in the company makes their own choice to be empowered or become a victim, the authors provide the tools for positive change.
After reading and applying the principles, described in the must read Authentic Conversations: Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment by Jamie Showkeir and Maren Showkeir, and you will never look at the conversations within your company in the same way again. Instead, you will understand that changing the talk holds the key to building a stronger company with a dedicated and responsible employees.
