The sixth post in a series exploring Speech Acts – the foundations of speaking and listening to make meaningful action possible.A conversation for action is largely made up of requests (will you do something for me?) and promises (yes, I will, or no, I won't), and developing skill in each of these can make all the difference in having what's important actually happen.Many of the difficulties we encounter are because we're not paying enough attention to the completeness of our requests and promises. Or because we're not responding effectively to the inevitable breakdowns in them that happen when people are speaking with one another.So, let's dive in and look at the first of ten parts that are needed in every request, and which are the source of many difficulties when not addressed.
(1) all requests need a speaker
This might seem obvious until you look at what happens when there isn't one. If someone you know well says 'please come to a meeting with me at 9am on Monday' you're able to tell a lot about the seriousness and reason for their request from what you know about them. And your decision about whether to set aside the time to join in, and your sincerity or cynicism if you turn up, will depend in large part upon this.But a request without a clearly defined speaker is much more difficult to respond to. If you say 'management ask that staff attend a meeting at 9am on Monday' don't be surprised if many people can't decide whether to come. 'Staff are asked to join a meeting' is even harder to interpret. 'Says who?' might be a reasonable response.All this is because every request is spoken by someone, a someone with a whole world of cares, commitments and history. When we respond to your request we're responding to the you that you are for us as much as to what you asked. And we're responding to the relationship we have with you - which is why a properly completed conversation for relationship leads so directly to more powerful requests.Leaving out the speaker leaves us with a lot of room for doubt and confusion. And it does little to foster what we imagine you wanted - a sincere, wholehearted, genuine response to something that you really need doing.
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You can read more on 'Speech Acts' - conversations, requests and promises - here.
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To those leaders in the corporate world who say you want your organisation to change, but then demand:a) to continue speaking and acting in exactly the way you're used to, andb) to avoid feeling discomfort, confusion, agitation, or anxietyHas it not become clear to you yet that the change you say you want isn't change of any kind at all?
Politeness.Highly rated in some circles. Especially if, like me, you live or grew up in England where it's the considered the stuff of civilised human interaction.And yet, the more I look, the more it seems that politeness and truth are very often at odds with one another, particularly when it comes to the ways we speak and work together in organisations.And while truth might at times be sharp, unsettling and surprising, I can't think of a more important principle around which to organise ourselves.Because it's not hard to figure out where the alternative - denial, or perhaps even lying - leads.
It was the author Ursula Le Guin's birthday this week.In her novel A Wizard of Earthsea, the young wizard Ged, eager to become powerful and knowledgable, begins his apprenticeship with his first true teacher, the elderly Ogion.For the first few months, they mostly accompany one another in silence. Ged sweeps the floor, tends to the goats, prepares food. They take long walks through the tall trees and groves of the nearby forest. It's an immersion into the everyday. No talk of magic, no talk of spells, no talk of knowledge.One afternoon, with growing frustration, Ged turns to his master. "When are you going to start teaching me?". And Ogion, with great patience, turns to his student. "The lesson began long ago and all around you", he tells him, "but you did not discover yet where to look for it."So many of us wear our cynicism and our world-weariness as a badge of sophistication, as if it's a mark of our intelligence that nothing can touch us, no idea or possibility or hope move us, no idea illuminate our lives. We've seen it all, we tell ourselves. We know what's what. And in doing so we separate ourselves from our lives.But, like Ged, it might be possible even then to find out that everything and everyone can be our teacher, if we'll only drop our defences and rigidity long enough to let the world in. We might discover, as Ged does, that genuine wisdom is cultivated by never setting oneself apart from life and from other living things.And, as the years unfold, perhaps we get to learn as Ged does, "what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees."
You say goodbye to her, perhaps at the doorway, perhaps with a hug, and you both say to one another 'see you soon'.But, as with every parting, you cannot know if that's true.So many possibilities. So many reasons why 'see you again' might not come to pass.Does remembering that, occasionally, help to bring you back in touch with the living, breathing wonder that she is, and that you are too?
It's easy to relate to life as if you're separate from it. As if life is something that happens to you or as if it's possible to reach out and manage life from a distance.Isn't that mostly how we experience ourselves?But if you look for a while, you may discover that there's no separation at all. That you are life, and life is you.How could it be otherwise? The body we each take to be our own is made up of trillions of cells, each bequeathed to us by a history that stretches back through millennia to the first single-celled creatures. Its structure, from the microscopic to the organisation of bones, muscles, organs is shared with billions of others living alongside us, and tens of billions more share aspects of it - eyes, hearts, blood, nerves, brains, cellular processes, hormones, enzymes. And all of that arises from the elements available on the planet we all inhabit and from the energetic processes made possible by the light and warmth of the sun.Where we each take ourselves to end - at the surface of our skin, perhaps - is not where life ends, at all.Given all of this, how could you possibly be separate from life?You are life or, put another way, the way that life is expressing itself right now.Or, you're the way life lives itself.And, given this, perhaps you can give up fighting for a while, and instead wonder at a world in which we get to be all of this, without having to ask or do anything to earn it.
If you're tired of the ways fitting in has you bending yourself out of shape - particularly if you're in one of those many environments in the world that talk about change while maintaining a dogged insistence on speaking, working, observing and practicing in long-standing, familiar ways - some words of support adapted from 
The fifth post in a series exploring 
The third post in a series exploring