What is a Conversation Gap?

Before I dig in to conversation gaps, a quick update on Katy.  Thank you to everyone for your well wishes; your compassion was much appreciated.  I am relieved to tell you that she has a calcium deposit under her tongue, which is harmless.  No further action needed.  Thank goodness. 

It takes these incidences to remind us not to take others for granted (dogs and people!).  You can imagine how much love I’ve been showering on both her and her brother Reuben this week.

On to business….I “announced” Two-Day on Monday.  22/2/2012 (or maybe you write it 2/22/2012 in your country).  This is our reminder not to take our people for granted.  They have issues and concerns (work, career or personal) that they would welcome a 1-1 conversation about.  So let’s get some of those conversation gaps addressed.

This term, conversation gap, comes from a research report by Career Innovation.  Here’s what they have to say:

“ Not every aspect of business is visible, or appears in the annual report. Dialogue is one example. It is the place where work gets done. It is the place where objectives are set, feedback is given, problems are resolved, praise is received, support is offered, and where trust and relationships are maintained or restored.

 

Through dialogue, a company’s brand comes to life. It is therefore, arguably, one of the most important and least visible business processes that exist in any organisation. This is especially significant in companies that are more networked, dynamic and responsive than ever before. In a very real sense, a business is the sum of a thousand everyday conversations.

Yet somehow this self-evident truth becomes lost in the operational fog of managing a large, complex organisation. We tend to focus on processes and structures that we can more easily see and control, rather than on the quality of our conversations.

……

Although people reported plentiful conversations over the past year, the Ci research identified a significant problem. Four in every ten respondents said they still have a topic they would like to raise with their manager, but are not doing so. We have called this the ‘conversation gap’.

A close look at the data reveals the huge impact of this gap. People with a topic to raise are less satisfied, less engaged and much more likely to be planning to leave.

The issues that people want to discuss are individual and varied, but there is a recurring theme through the research: Future-focused and development-focused conversations are being squeezed out by a ‘lack of quality time’, and the long-term invisible impact is substantial.”

So, let’s get some of these conversations on the table, and use Two-Day as our reminder.  Have you pencilled in some time yet?