Date Night Conversations: Recapture the Magic with Great Couples Communication Tools
Contents:
And they offer guidance on how to balance the benefits of open-ended talk with the realities of strategic execution. Drawing on the experience of leaders at diverse companies from around the world, Talk, Inc. Research in Motion Blackberry. And, most recently, JC Penney. Hardly a week goes by without a report that one well-known company or another is in the throes of a turnaround. Each period of business history has its own representative corporate type. The s were the age of the conglomerate. In more recent decades, the startup has achieved iconic status.
But the kind of organization that marks our own historical moment is, arguably, the turnaround company. In almost every sector, there are once-dominant enterprises that find themselves on the wrong side of a shift in customer demand or the emergence of a disruptive technology. So what does it take for a leader to pull a company out of the doldrums, or indeed out of real or potential bankruptcy?
Date Night Conversations: Recapture The Magic With Great Couple's Communication Tools [Thomas E King] on www.farmersmarketmusic.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying. Editorial Reviews. About the Author. Thomas King, MSW, www.farmersmarketmusic.com, LICSW is a therapist in private Improve your marriage with great couple's communication tools. Date Night Conversations is a practical couple's communication manual for.
It starts, no doubt, with a sense of urgency. In that respect, a turnaround effort differs from a standard organizational change initiative. Change happens slowly—whereas, in a turnaround situation, time is of the essence. Decide, act, decide, act: That must be the order of the day. Or so it might seem, anyway. In fact, while the need for speed is undeniable, effective turnaround leaders also keenly appreciate the need to stop—to stop and talk with the people in their company who must do the day-to-day work of moving the organization in a new direction.
Such leaders understand that a push to undertake a new strategy or to redirect operational performance depends pivotally on how well they communicate with employees. Equally important, it depends on how well they manage communication throughout their organization. Consider the example of Starbucks. In , the coffee chain was struggling to maintain its market position and to ward off a growing set of competitive threats. As reports on that effort demonstrate, Schultz placed communication at the center of his turnaround strategy.
It has to be communication of the right sort. In normal times, leaders can allow ideas and information to move across their organization in a deliberate, structured, layer-by-layer fashion. In a turnaround scenario, however, leaders must do whatever they can to make that process nimbler and smoother—more dynamic and more immediate. Our model of organizational conversation features four distinct elements: Here, in the spirit of that model, we present four steps toward powering a turnaround project through conversation.
Conversational intimacy involves efforts by leaders to create and maintain a close connection with employees at every level of their company. And it requires leaders to be honest and authentic, especially when it comes to sharing bad news or addressing difficult topics.
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In , when Anne Mulcahy took charge of operations at Xerox, there were plenty of difficult topics to confront. Xerox was deeply in debt, its stock was plummeting, and its core business model showed every sign of being unsustainable. In that role and at that moment, Mulcahy focused on getting out into the field and talking with people. A study of her tenure during this period quotes a colleague of hers as follows: In talking to fellow top executives, in particular, Mulcahy was blunt about reckoning with points of potential conflict.
Respect people by delivering the truth. So conversationally adept leaders find ways to promote interactivity.
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They deploy communication channels that allow for back-and-forth discussion, and they build a culture that fosters that kind of discussion. The Japanese automaker had seen its performance deteriorate over the preceding decade, and a shake-up was clearly in order. Among the first items that Ghosn changed was a protocol that had been in place for meetings of top executives. We actually debate issues. We openly disagree with one another.
It took some time for all of us to get used to it, but our meetings are much more productive. Ghosn also initiated practices that enabled greater interactivity throughout Nissan.
Instead of relying on memos—or on middle managers—to convey his message, he used a companywide video hookup to present his transformation plan to employees. Conversation inclusion exists where leaders adopt measures that enable employees to participate fully in the communication process. By including people at all levels of a company in the organizational conversation, leaders can achieve a more intense quality of engagement among those who must carry out a turnaround project.
The company needed to move up the value chain in the technology services industry, and making that shift would require HCL employees to change how they related to each other—and to the company. Talk strategy—and talk strategically. Only when leaders approach communication with intentionality can they ensure that smart talk will result in sustained action. By carefully building communication efforts around a clear organizational vision, and by taking care to follow an overarching strategy for those efforts, a leader can pursue a turnaround conversation that will keep a company on message and on track.
The best way to do so, he concluded, was to empower those employees—to give them greater autonomy and flexibility in how they did their job. Yet they could exercise that autonomy fruitfully only if SAS leaders also gave them a big-picture sense of what the company was aiming to achieve. Carlzon, in a study of his early work as CEO, put it this way: But anyone who is given information cannot avoid assuming [responsibility]. Talk in all its manifestations—intimate, interactive, inclusive, and intentional—is the cultural instrument required to get people engaged.
Meanwhile, consultant Karina Butera recently posted a review of Talk, Inc. Here, in brief, is her verdict:.
Overall, the authors give a compelling case for broadening the function of Corporate Communication from a one-way, top-down approach, to a two-way exchange. As strong business relationships are built from productive conversations, I see this book as an excellent guide to assist you in your business relationship building.
Business blogger extraordinaire Bob Morris , who wrote a warm review of Talk, Inc. The result is a wide-ranging discussion that touches on our personal backgrounds, our speculations about the future of leadership, and our musings on how the likes of Lao-Tzu and Voltaire might provide insight into the meaning of organizational conversation. Did Barack Obama win re-election because he was a better communicator than Mitt Romney?
But the communication factor merits a keen look.
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Both candidates, after all, waged this close-fought battle largely with words: Through their communication efforts, they each sought to forge a connection with voters. Several weeks ago, we surveyed HBR.
Both candidates, according to respondents, displayed an ability to communicate well. Yet the survey results indicate that Obama and Romney showed their respective strengths as communicators in very distinct ways. We based our survey in part on a model that we call organizational conversation. In that model, leaders strive to practice and promote a form of communication that resembles personal conversation. Building upon our research on how leaders communicate today, we have identified four elements that make up this model: In the survey, which was open to HBR.
Pretty much across the board, those who intended to vote for Obama gave their candidate higher marks as a communicator than they gave to Romney, and vice versa.
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Nonetheless, we also observed an intriguing pattern that cuts across the line of candidate preference. Both Romney supporters and Obama supporters gave Romney higher scores on his overall communication performance than they did on any of the four areas of performance that we associate with the practice of organizational conversation.
Sudan president Omar Bashir and his host president Museveni have reiterated their commitments to solve the South Sudan crisis by talking to the opposing Experts have hinted on the fact that women who change partners are more likely to experience preeclampsia than women who bear children with one partner New Vision TV puts the whole saga Kenneth Kimuli's career rotates around making people laugh. This operation is dubbed 'restoration of trade order and sanity' and every street in Kampala has over 10 police officers deployed. The creation of a free trade area billed as the world's largest in terms of participating countries, comes after two years of negotiations, and is one
Those results, in our view, suggest that both sets of respondents attributed to Romney a talent for communication that differs substantially from the talent that Obama displayed. Obama excelled at pursuing a conversational form of political communication. So we argued previously in this space , and the results of our survey tend to support that conclusion.
Romney, meanwhile, excelled at communicating with voters in what we might call a more traditional manner. In that venue, Romney was clear, cogent, and forceful. He knew what he wanted to say, and he said it systematically, using a tone and a rhetorical approach that he knew would appeal to his target audience. Improve your marriage with great couple's communication tools.
Date nights, of course, may be chats over morning coffee or any activity that encourages you to connect. On your dates, do you sometimes wonder what you should talk about or find yourself avoiding talking about things you know you should discuss? Many times couples keep conversations pretty superficial and as a result they fail to deepen their relationship.
Thomas E. King (Author of Study Guide For Use With Advanced Financial Accounting)
Date Night Conversations is a practical couple's communication manual for having meaningful conversations that are designed to strengthen your marriage or relationship. This book will provide you with guidance on how to talk about the key issues every couple should discuss. First of all, you will learn to identify the important topics that can strengthen your relationship, and secondly, you will be given the structure to have the right kind of discussions on each topic. Key topics covered include understanding the patterns in your relationship, strengthening the positives, improving sex and intimacy, resolving conflicts and problem solving, recovering from an affair or other traumas, and much more.
Each chapter contains exercises and instructions to improve your understanding, guide your communication, and enrich your marriage. He works with couples and adults to help them become the best of who they are. He has worked in healthcare, government, major corporations, and an international consulting firm, providing counseling, coaching, consulting and training services.
He lives in St.