Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

• a lack of privacy; 
• distractions. 
Less obvious, but just as important, are the assumptions that we 
bring to our conversations. All conversations start from 
assumptions. If we leave them unquestioned, misunderstandings 
and conflict can quickly arise. For example, we might assume 
that: 
• we both know what we are talking about; 
• we need to agree; 
• we know how the other person views the situation; 
• we shouldn’t let our feelings show; 
• the other person is somehow to blame for the problem; 
• we can be brutally honest; 
• we need to solve the other person’s problem; 
• we’re right and they’re wrong. 
These assumptions derive from our opinions about what is true, 
or about what we – or others – should do. We bring 
mental models
to our conversations: constructions about reality that determine 
how we look at it. For example, I might hold a mental model that 
we are in business to make a profit; that women have an 
inherently different management style from men; or that 
character is determined by some set of national characteristics. 
Millions of mental models shape and drive our thinking, all the 
time. We can’t think 
without 
mental models. Thinking is the 
process of developing and changing our mental models. 
All too often, however, conversations become conflicts 
between these mental models. This is adversarial conversation, 
and it is one of the most important and deadly reasons why 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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25 How Conversations Work
conversations go wrong. (You’ll find more about adversarial 
conversation in Chapter 3.) 
Working out the relationship 
Our relationship defines the limits and potential of our 
conversation. We converse differently with complete strangers 
and with close acquaintances. Conversations are ways of 
establishing, fixing or changing a relationship. 
Relationships are neither fixed nor permanent. They are 
complex and dynamic. Our relationship operates along a number 
of dimensions, including: