Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

23 How Conversations Work
Why do conversations go wrong? 
We can all think of conversations at work that have gone wrong. 
Working out 
why
they went wrong may be hard. Conversations 
are so subtle and they happen so fast. Few of us have been trained 
in the art of effective conversation. Conversation is a life skill, 
and – like most life skills – one that we are usually expected to 
pick up as we go along. 
Broadly, there are four main areas where conversations can 
fail: 
• context;
• relationship;
• structure;
• behaviour. 
These are the four dimensions of conversation. By looking at 
them, we can begin to understand more clearly how 
conversations work, why they go wrong, and how we can begin to 
improve them. 
Putting conversations in context 
All conversations have a context. They happen for a reason. 
Most conversations form part of a larger conversation: they 
are part of a process or a developing relationship. 
Many conversations fail because one or both of us ignore the 
context. If we don’t check that we understand why the 
conversation is happening, we may very quickly start to 
misunderstand each other. 
The problem may simply be that the conversation never 
happens. One of the most persistent complaints against 
managers is that they are not there to talk to: ‘I never see him’, 
‘She has no idea what I do’, ‘He simply refuses to listen’. Other 
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24 Improve your Communication Skills
obvious problems that afflict the context of the conversation 
include: 
• not giving enough time to the conversation; 
• holding the conversation at the wrong time; 
• conversing in an uncomfortable, busy or noisy place;