Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging people to realize their potential.
Interpretation
Conversation fosters connections that help individuals discover and harness their abilities.
The quote by Theodore Zeldin emphasizes the transformative power of conversation within organizations. While existing networks serve to create competitive advantages, the act of conversing encourages individuals to unlock their potential, fostering a culture of growth and collaboration rather than mere competition. This shift from traditional networking to conversational connections can lead to deeper insights and enhanced performance among team members.
In practice
In a team-building workshop, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of communication in collaboration.
Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice.
So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, to attempt to increase, by even a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world.
I think one of the most important changes of our time has been our attitude to fear. Every civilisation defends itself by keeping fears out and saying 'we protect you from fear'. But it also produces new fears and throughout history people have changed the kind of fears which have worried them.
However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself.
You don't have to wait till your party's in power to have an impact on life at home and around the world.
The servant-leader is servant first... It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first.
Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.
That's a strong sign of a good coach, to let an assistant participate. It shows his confidence in the coach's ability not to have to dominate everything.
This fulfils my ambition. I still have my father's robe as Chancellor. I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid office.
I have been in meetings where a head of state will say, 'I like your tie,' to a man... or, 'I like your country because the weather's good,' or whatever. So for me, the pins in some ways were openers.
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