A lot happens over coffee and conversations.
Businesses are built over a dialogue.

Unfortunately, we are too short sighted to pay enough attention how

Conversations have words and words have the ability to trigger emotional reactions.
Words have meaning and carry baggage;
Every time we speak and attach meaning,
Every time we hear something, we interpret meaning,
Every time we interpret meaning, it all gets stored as a memory, remains there -ready to be activated during a conversation.

In my work, with and for leaders to conduct meaningful dialogues, rarely have I found leaders trying to decipher meaning.
The conversations often play around the surface level due to this ardent need to find an answer or to have my opinion heard..

However,

 in a dialogue, the important point is not the particular opinion—but rather the softening up, the opening up of the mind, and looking at all the other opinions

Softening up or being sensitive … is being able to sense that something is happening, to sense the way you respond, the way other people respond, to sense the subtle differences and similarities.

The senses provide you with information, but you have to be sensitive to it or you won’t see it.

An example that I find very useful in Bohm’s narrative, is
If you know a person very well, you may pass him on the street and say, “I saw him.” If you are asked what the person was wearing, however, you may not know, because you didn’t really look. You were not sensitive to all that, because you saw that person through the screen of thought. And that was not sensitivity.


Meaning is not static—it is flowing.


We start thinking together.
We talk coherently.
We start sensing
We co-create meaning

And that forms the basis of conversational intelligence.

Moving from ME to WE