Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

2. Structure your thinking 
You can improve your conversations enormously by giving them 
structure. The simplest way to structure a conversation is to 
break it in half. 
Thinking, as we have seen can be modelled as a two-stage 
process. 
First-stage thinking
is thinking about a problem; 
second-
stage thinking
is thinking about a solution. 
Many managerial conversations leap to second-stage
thinking without spending nearly enough time in the first stage. 
They look for solutions and almost ignore the problem. 
Why this urge to ignore the problem? Perhaps because 
problems are frightening. To stay with a problem – to explore it, 
to try to understand it further, to confront it and live with it for a 
few moments – is too uncomfortable. People don’t like living 
with unresolved problems. Better to deal with it: sort it out; solve 
it; get rid of it. 
Resist the temptation to rush into second-stage thinking. 
Give the first stage – the problem stage – as much attention and 
time as you think appropriate. Then give it a little more. And 
make sure that you are both in the same stage of the conversation 
at the same time. 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

---

40 Improve your Communication Skills
Link the stages of your conversation together. Linking helps 
you to steer the conversation comfortably. Skilled conversation 
holders can steer the conversation by linking the following: 
• the past and the present; 
• the problem and the solution; 
• first-stage and second-stage thinking; 
• requests and answers; 
• negative ideas and positive ideas; 
• opinions about what is true, with speculation about the 
consequences.