The conversational "ping"

It's always a tense part of any movie involving submarines. Hidden under the surface, the commander says "one ping only please"; a signal is sent and the tension rises as we wait to see if there's something out there. (My favourite submarine move remains "Crimson Tide" - a real talking point on leadership styles)

But our conversations are often different, particularly in meetings. We say one thing that often has two parts - the surface message - often bland and safe - and the one under the surface, looking to find out what we really want to know.

The challenge is that we often don't slow down enough to understand what's really going on. The surface response comes back quickly - as safe and bland as the one we sent, or sometimes we just go to outright conflict. The sub surface message though, the important one, takes longer. it has to be received, processed, a decision made a response decided, and that response heard.

Under pressure, our conversations are not conversations at all. We tran…