Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On

Introduction

As our world grows more interconnected and turbulent, building teams that perform under pressure is an increasingly vital task. But creating such teams is surprisingly difficult. Despite our best efforts, our teams and organizations are plagued by behaviors that are as bad for people as they are for business. In our meetings and mergers, in performance feedback and change initiatives, and when making decisions and solving problems, we suffer from a chronic mismatch between the good we intend to achieve and the ways we work together to achieve it. In situations that require open dialogue, high collaboration, and learning, we instead get closed-minded debate, zero-sum conflict, and defensiveness. The only groups that regularly benefit ...