The second post in a series exploring Speech Acts - the foundations of speaking and listening to make meaningful action possible.Three different kinds of conversation are required for acting together effectively. They're like concentric circles - each provides the ground for the next. But we often miss one or more of them out. As each relies for its effectiveness on the one before, this can lead to all kinds of trouble.
The foundational conversation is a conversation for relationship, in which we're understanding one another and finding out together whether we have any basis for action. Miss this and it's extraordinarily hard for us to agree why we're working together. It's difficult to dive in wholeheartedly. And equally difficult to understand what is being asked of us by others.On the shoulders of the conversation for relationship stands a conversation for possibility. Given the shared concerns, commitments and understanding from the conversation for relationship, what possibilities can we see? Are there any we care enough about on which to take action? And what are we ready to commit to, together? This is where hopes, aspirations, and creative responses take wing.Just watch how the energy for a project can dissipate if you don't explore possibilities fully. And if you haven't had a full and frank conversation for possibility, you run the risk of launching into action that nobody feels committed to taking. See The Abilene Paradox for a wonderful explanation of this, just one example of the endless wastefulness of meetings and projects we take up that nobody really wanted.And finally, a conversation for action in which requests, offers and promises are made. This conversation changes the world for each of us, because it's where we make commitments to act in support of our own and others' intentions. Done well, we coordinate our efforts so that our intentions are realised. Done poorly, we suffer duplication of effort, the frustration and confusion of promises that mean little, and the resignation and erosion of trust that comes from repeatedly being let down.Over the next few days I'll take up each of these conversations in turn.Meanwhile, you could start to look at your own pattern of conversations with others.
Is there one of these conversations that you favour? One that you miss out repeatedly? What are the consequences?
Are there times when you're in one of the conversations and the people you're speaking with are in another? For example, what happens if you think you're in a conversation for action and others are still in a conversation for relationship?
And when there's a breakdown or difficulty, how do you try to resolve it? By pushing on further in the conversation you're already in (for example, dealing with confusion or listlessness by coming up with more to do - a conversation for action - rather than exploring how committed everyone is to the current course - a conversation for possibility)?
Your answers to these questions might open up new insights and actions for you immediately, and will help you in exploring the three conversations further with me over the coming days.
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You can read more on 'Speech Acts' - conversations, requests and promises - here.
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One of the great contributions of the philosophers 
If you want to bring about change in any system - from your inner world to a whole organisation - one skill you can work on is naming.When we have a name for something - table, chair, thought, mood, conversation, relationship, inner critic - we give ourselves a way of pointing to it, observing it, and talking about it in the world we share with others. We bring it into the light so that it can be seen, greatly increasing our capacity to observe, make choices, and act.What's important to see here is that our patterns of conversation tend to repeatedly draw attention to some things while leaving others unobserved. We keep this going by insisting on speaking in the same way, with the same language, and with the same people over and over. In this way our speaking becomes habitual, and loses its much of its power to reveal things to us. And what's unobserved remains in the background, where whatever effect it is having remains silent and invisible.We mostly have hardly a clue how much of human life is in the background at any moment, how much it is shaping us, and how little attention we're paying to it.So skilful naming has power. It's no wonder that in ancient mythology names are understood to give great influence over people and situations and that the simple act of naming daemons, the silent shadowy forces of the underworld, immediately robs them of much of their potency.And this is why you can open many possibilities by paying attention to patterns in your private, inner conversation and in your conversation with others, and by introducing names for what is currently unnamed. The more precise the naming, and the more you use it to bring forward those aspects of the background that are shaping things, the more powerful the possibilities.And if you're interested, you can do much to learn new words - distinctions - that you don't yet have in order to do this. Study books, talks, people, poems, songs, movies. Attend courses.And instead of staying in your own familiar world with its patterns and habits of language, spend time with people who live and work in very different situations to you. The distinctions that are central in their world, and that are right on the margins of your own, can be among the most powerful ones to discover.
We often ask what's next to do? how could we go faster? how can we get more done?And we turn away from other questions such as how does this feel for each of us? how tired are we? how can we sustain ourselves? what actually matters?But I think the biggest question we most often fail to address comes from an understanding that, as human beings, we are shaped deeply by that which we repeatedly do.We ask what to do, but we don't often ask ourselves "what is our doing doing?" - to us, to the people around us, and to the world we leave for those who come after us.
It's also a book about the background narratives that shape our lives invisibly, and in particular the industrial narrative that has us keep our heads down and fit into the shape that others (particularly in the world of work) have made for us. At its heart is an impassioned plea for courage - to step out of the endless cycle of 'more and more' and the sense of scarcity it inevitably brings, and instead to turn towards what brings us and the people around us fully to life.For anyone who longs to make a contribution, but did not yet find the wherewithal to begin, I cannot recommend it too highly.Watch upcoming posts here for news of a book study group I'm about to launch. By joining you'll have the chance to read and talk about a book with others and explore how to bring it to life and work. The Icarus Deception will be the first book we'll be taking up.
It seems to me we could go a long way in work and in wider life we were to take aliveness more seriously.Many organisations I come across seem to be in the middle of a constriction that's going the other way. More processes, more rules, more plans, more meetings in which people wonder why they're present, more measures, more hours, more rushing, more emails, more unexpressed panic, more overwhelm, more spinning in tight spirals, more quiet fearfulness.Where does all this lead if we continue down this path?And yet, if you look closely and quietly for a while, you get to see that most of what's happening that's of value take place in spite of these, not because of them. The new idea sparked in a conversation in the lift, a moment of genuine connection between members of a team that allows for new understanding and trust, the discovery of some inner resourcefulness that allows someone to speak up in a new way, a fiery exchange in which what's important is expressed and heard: all are examples of this.When we forget that organisations are alive we miss a huge opportunity. At the moment I think most of us have our heads turned in the other direction.
"I'd like to have courageous conversations, but I can't tell the truth here", he told me, "because they won't make it safe for me to do so". He - a senior leader in a global corporation. They - the handful of people more senior (in a positional sense) than him.We talked for a while, and it became apparent that he was only willing to speak up about what he was seeing when it felt as if there was no risk to him. No risk to his position, of course, but also no risk of feeling embarrassed, ashamed, scared, confused. No risk of the gut-wrenching, stomach-churning body sensation that can come from speaking without knowing what will happen.I think this is an ethical question. The decision to say only what's important when it feels right withholds from others vital information which may not be available to them. More significantly, by staying silent in the face of what appears wrong or mistaken you condone, by your silence, what is happening.How can you call a conversation 'courageous' if it only happens when you know everything will be just fine?All of this is so important because your organisation, whatever size it is, is inescapably 
I sat outside for a while this morning, watching as trees slowly appeared from the lifting autumn-morning mist. This morning's sky was steel-grey, breaking into streaks of red and pink as the sun caught the underside of the clouds. It was still, quiet and achingly beautiful.A beginning of this sort happens many days of the year, yet many of us consistently miss any kind of genuine contact with the natural world of which we're all inescapably part. We rush from home to office, travelling in sealed cars or trains, and spend our days in the glow of electric lighting and computer screens.We wear our busyness and exhaustion as badges of pride and status, our inability to stop fully a sign of our importance or our earnestness. And in doing so we miss so much, not least an opportunity to return to a deep felt sense of our humanity and our place in the world that gave us life and which supports us.What do you think we become, individually and collectively, through our living this way?
Many of us are trying all the time to fit in, hoping that way we'll eventually have the recognition, trust and security we long for.But fitting in, rather than finding out who you are and bringing that, always involves some measure of contortion or self-abandonment. You discover eventually that what is recognised and trusted about you is precisely the distorted image you've been working to have others see. And it turns out not to feel safe or secure at all, because of the constant vigilance that maintaining such an image requires.Fitting in keeps the world just as it is, because it involves giving up those very parts of you which stand out, and which have the possibility of bringing something new.The alternative? Perhaps aiming towards this, beautifully expressed in the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:
When you find yourself filled with judgements about other people, don't be so sure that what you're experiencing is really anything much to do with them.It may well be a simple projection of the harsh judgments of your own inner critic.The critic covers its tracks like that. Wily enough to disguise itself in many ways, it would love to have you believe that everyone else is out to get you or disappoint you. And it would rather you blame what's outside you than turn your attention inwards, where you might discover its role in keeping your world so small and contained.For this reason, the first place to look when you're judgemental of others is towards yourself. You might just find it's there that your difficulty with them can be most skilfully resolved.