Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

First-stage thinking
is the thinking we do when we are 
looking at reality. First-stage thinking allows us to recognise 
something because it fits into some pre-existing mental pattern 
or idea. Ideas allow us to make sense of reality. The result of 
first-stage thinking is that we translate reality into language. We 
name an object or an event; we turn a complicated physical 
process into an equation; we simplify a structure by drawing a 
diagram; we contain a landscape on a map. 
• 
Liking. 
How is the conversation being affected by your 
feelings towards each other? Is the liking or disliking 
getting in the way of a productive outcome? 
• 
Territory.
Where are the boundaries? Are you finding 
common ground? Where can you give permission for the 
other person to enter your territory? Where can you ask 
permission to enter theirs? 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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31 How Conversations Work
Second-stage thinking
manipulates the language we have 
created to achieve a result. Having named something as, say, a 
cup, we can talk about it coherently. We can judge its 
effectiveness as a cup, its value to us, how we might use it or 
improve its design. Having labelled a downturn in sales as a 
marketing problem, we explore the consequences in marketing 
terms. 
Stage one:
Perception
Sensation; intuition
Reality
Action
Representation
Language, models, images
Stage two:
Judgement
Reason; evaluation
Figure 2.1
The two stages of thinking
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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