Open Space Conversations

Over the past week, I’ve spent at least twenty hours in conversations, and had lots of opportunity to practice what I preached in my recent article on Better Conversation. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m coming along very slowly. Move me from written language, which can be composed carefully, and where no one needs to see your horrific first drafts, to oral language, where you can’t take anything back, and where every silence hangs like an accusation of inarticulateness, and I’m way out of my element. I’m really struck at how apt the ‘dance’ analogy is:

• Practice it badly and you get worse, not better, just entrenching bad habits you will have to unlearn.
• It takes two to tango — if one person is inept, the collective product will be inept, no matter how competent the other partner.
• It takes a lot of conscious, skillful practice to be competent at it.
• Much depends on the quality of the tacit signals and permissions granted between the partners, and on their passion for the material they’re working with.
• Some people are inherently more coordinated and capable at it, but even if it isn’t a natural talent you can still become very good at it.
• Studying books, tapes and video, or doing any work on it alone, is not nearly as productive as practicing diligently with someone who’s better at it than you are.

Since most of my conversations are on Skype, I’ve posted some practice reminders on my laptop, to work on during conversations:

• Don’t try to formulate what you’re going to say instead of paying attention to the other participants in the conversation (why is there no noun in English for ‘participants in a conversation’?) — you’ll lose the thread and miss too much. Instead, formulate what you’re going to say as you say it (yikes, this is scary, it requires you to learn the humbling skill of listening to yourself).
• Don’t interrupt — if necessary ask for the floor.
• Don’t anticipate (complete others’ sentences) or prejudge (keep an open mind).
• Invite others to speak.
• Talk less, listen more.
• If you don’t understand, say so.
• Be respectful — lots of thanks, apologies whenever appropriate, don’t criticize or gossip about those not present.
• If you don’t have passion about a topic, don’t waste everyone’s time talking about it.

This last one is tough — what if there’s something else you want to talk about (or worse, nothing else you want to talk to this person about. How do you gracefully change the topic or end a conversation?

This got me thinking about Open Space, and the protocols for that process, which is substantially a process for conversation. Could these protocols be applied to informal conversations (and even to various types of meetings)? Here’s what I came up with:

1. Invitations Matter: The crafting of the invitation is critical — a personal, engaging, optional invitation — with the time, place, medium, duration, and theme/topic stated. What shouldn’t we invest that kind of energy into every conversation, to get the most from it? And a theme/topic is different from an objective — conversations are all about learning, exploration, discovery, not about getting things done (there are usually better ways to ‘achieve objectives’ than conversations). If the objective isn’t obvious, it’s presumptuous to set one objective for all participants, so whether it’s obvious or not, there’s no need to state it in the invitation.
2. Impromptu Invitations: If the conversation is impromptu (e.g. meeting someone new at a cocktail party), you still need to craft an invitation — but it’s much tougher and takes good improv skills and courage: “Our host tells me you’ve written a book about X; would you be interested in talking with me for a few minutes about the message of the book and hearing some of my ideas on the subject?” If the answer is ‘no’, wouldn’t you rather hear that up front instead of fumbling around with small talk before it becomes obvious?
3. The Acceptance Commitment: The acceptance of the invitation is also critical — it imposes a commitment on you to be there on time, end on time, give the conversation your undivided attention and stick to the topic you were invited to talk about. “Yes, I’d be delighted to dance.”
4. The Opening: Open Space allows time at the beginning for participants to toss out what topics they want (and don’t want) to explore, and in what order. There’s no reason not to do this at the start of any conversation. It may sound a bit formal, but it could save a lot of wasted time, and avoid getting you into conversations and topics you’re not interested in.
5. When Not to Have a Conversation: A conversation is more than just the exchange of information and opinions — if that’s all you’re having a conversation about, you might want to consider whether there are more effective and economical ways to convey information and opinions (probably asynchronously) than with a conversation (or a meeting!)
6. The Law of Two Feet says “If during the course of any gathering, persons find themselves in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their two feet and go to some more productive space.” This is hard enough in a large Open Space gathering, but how do you do it in a two-person conversation, especially if you realize you shouldn’t have accepted the invitation in the first place? The Law says it is personally irresponsible to just hang in there. If it was your misunderstanding that led to the situation, you owe it to both of you to ‘fess up, apologize and end the conversation. In any other situation it’s irresponsible to pretend to be engaged in a conversation when you’re not, and to let the other person drone on. Use discretion whether to be blunt or tactful (each is sometimes appropriate) in announcing your departure, but do it.
7. Taking Notes: Open Space conversations are generally recorded or at least someone is taking notes. In conversations I like the idea of having one participant draw a MindMap of the conversation so that every participant can see it (either display it on a large screen using a projector, or for virtual conversations use a white-boarding tool) as it evolves, and so that misunderstandings can be corrected and omissions captured in real time. It’s a great way to add clarity and discipline to a conversation, and free mindmapping and whiteboarding tools are available. I’ve even used legal-size paper and pencil to ‘document’ two-person conversations when I’m sitting side by side with them.
8. When It’s Over, It’s Over: I’m ambivalent about conversation ‘recaps’. If you’ve used a mindmap or equivalent, there’s no need to restate what’s been said and agreed to at the end of the conversation. I’m really excited about the trust the individual to act principle of Open Space, an extension of the personal responsibility principle. If you really need to recap “next steps” it suggests people weren’t really paying attention, in which case the cited next steps are unlikely to get done anyway. And deciding on the timing of the “next conversation/meeting” also seems presumptuous to me. If more needs to be done, someone who cares enough about it should craft a new invitation. So I prefer conversations and meetings that end (on time) spontaneously when the participants agree that it’s over. Then it ends with thanks and expressions of delight, not with allotment of “who’s going to do what by when” duties.

I have several more conversations slated for the next few days. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go write some invitations.