When a Conversation Changes What You Can See

How leaders can use dialogue to understand a difficult situation more fully

A study of 1,114 CEOs across six countries found that, on average, 70% of their recorded time involved interaction with others, including meetings, calls, videoconferences and emails.[1] This measures interaction in executive work, including written exchanges. It gives us a reason to examine how leaders use their conversations. A colleague raises a concern, a team struggles to agree, or a manager prepares to address disappointing performance. How we understand the situation influences the questions we ask, the explanations we accept and the actions we consider.

We often enter a conversation with assumptions: things we take for granted about what is happening or why. These influence which events we recall, whose experience we ask about and whether we examine our own contribution. Sometimes, talking with another person changes our understanding of the difficulty itself. A question brings an overlooked episode into view. Hearing our own words reveals a contradiction. A pause gives us time to express something we had sensed but could not yet explain. How does our understanding change when these overlooked or unspoken aspects become part of the conversation?

This article explores how a conversation can help a leader examine an initial interpretation and develop a fuller understanding of what is happening. The practical aim is to recognise what your initial interpretation leaves unexplored, give uncertain experience time to become clearer, and invite another person’s perspective before deciding how to act. By the end, you will have a short practice to use when preparing for your next difficult conversation.

How assumptions shape a conversation

Consider an illustrative coaching conversation. A manager begins: “I think they’re losing motivation.” In the two meetings after a planning discussion, the colleague offered no suggestions when invited to contribute ideas. The colleague has also stopped volunteering for new work. The manager wants help preparing to ask for more commitment.

The coach invites the manager to describe a recent occasion when the change became noticeable.

The manager recalls a planning meeting. The colleague proposed a different way to organise a task. With the deadline approaching, the manager asked for the existing plan to be followed. Later, part of the work was reassigned without discussing the change with the colleague.

Recounting the episode brings the earlier proposal back into view. The manager had remembered the colleague’s subsequent silence more readily than the suggestion that preceded it.

This episode leaves several possibilities open. The colleague may be losing interest, uncertain about responsibilities, or frustrated by how decisions are made. Something outside this interaction may be affecting participation. The colleague’s perspective is still missing.

Until now, the manager’s preparation has centred on the colleague’s motivation. The earlier proposal, the response to it and the colleague’s experience of the exchange have received little attention. Bringing those details into the coaching conversation gives the manager a fuller basis for preparing to speak with the colleague.

The explanation of reduced motivation is already shaping the manager’s planned request for more commitment. That is why this example begins by examining an assumption. Other situations may call first for factual clarification, expression of frustration, agreement on responsibilities or changes to workload and authority. Here, asking what has changed in the colleague’s experience of contributing to the team can help establish what needs attention.

Making an assumption available for examination

In On Dialogue, David Bohm explores how attachment to our assumptions can limit what becomes possible in conversation. His account invites participants to make those assumptions available for shared examination, including noticing the impulse to defend them.[2]

Applied to this example, the manager can recognise “they’re losing motivation” as an interpretation and examine what supports it. The next step is to consider which details it has made easier to overlook. Bringing only that interpretation into the conversation may lead the questions repeatedly back to commitment while leaving the colleague’s experience of contributing unexplored. This is an application of Bohm’s perspective to a workplace conversation, rather than a description of his full dialogue practice.

One useful coaching question is: “What have you observed that led you to that conclusion?” Another is: “Which part of the episode is harder to explain from that starting point?”

The colleague’s proposal matters because it complicates the initial account. The manager can remain concerned about performance while becoming more precise about what is known and what needs to be asked.

Finding words for what feels unresolved

There may be another moment worth attending to. Preparing to say “I welcome initiative”, the manager notices some unease. The sentence does not quite capture the experience of that meeting.

With time, words emerge: “I wanted initiative, but I also wanted to avoid reopening the plan.” Those expectations may have been difficult for the colleague to reconcile.

Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing offers a way of exploring what he calls a felt sense: a bodily felt impression of a situation as a whole, whose meaning is initially unclear. Someone may feel that there is more to an experience than their current explanation captures. They attend to that impression and allow words or images to emerge, checking whether these express it accurately and whether it develops.[3]

Gendlin’s work also makes room for different forms of expression. In his earlier paper “Focusing”, he describes how words, images and interpersonal responses can help carry experience forward when the person keeps returning to what is freshly felt.[4]

A coach might invite the manager to pause with the unease and see what becomes noticeable. Words, an image, or nothing more definite may emerge. The coach leaves room for the manager’s own description.

This emerging understanding still needs examination. Feeling that a phrase fits one’s experience does not establish what the colleague thought or why they acted as they did. It gives the manager something more specific to bring into the conversation.

Leaving out the unease may allow the manager to repeat “I welcome initiative” without examining the conflicting expectations communicated. Giving that experience words makes it possible to acknowledge those expectations and ask how they affected the colleague. What had remained difficult to express can now become available for discussion.

A different conversation becomes possible

The manager might begin by describing what happened: “In the planning meeting, you suggested another approach. I asked you to stay with the plan, and later I reassigned part of the task without discussing it with you. In the two meetings since then, you haven’t offered suggestions when I’ve asked for ideas. What has that been like from your side?”

This opening is observational, accountable and exploratory. The manager describes events the colleague can recognise or question, includes their own actions and invites the colleague’s experience. The account is open to correction. Including the manager’s part makes room for something the initial explanation might have left unheard.

The answer may be surprising. The colleague might have felt that initiative was unwelcome, explain that another urgent responsibility has taken precedence, or disagree with the manager’s account. Each response gives them something to examine together.

The manager’s willingness to hear an answer matters as much as the wording. Quickly explaining why every decision was necessary may leave little opportunity to understand the colleague’s experience. Listening, checking what has been understood and sharing constraints can help both people clarify what contribution is expected and what support or authority it requires.

They may still need a direct discussion about performance. They will approach it with a clearer account of the work and the relationship in which it happens.

Try it before your next difficult conversation

Choose a situation in which you already have a fairly settled explanation of another person’s behaviour. Take a few minutes to prepare:

1. Write down your interpretation. Then describe one specific episode: what was said or done, including your own part in it?
2. Look for a detail that complicates your account. Whose experience, which event or which part of your own involvement has received little attention? What remains uncertain?
3. Pause before settling on your wording. Is there anything about the situation you find difficult to express? Give it a little time, without forcing an answer.
4. Prepare a question you need the other person to answer. Begin with a specific event and acknowledge your part in it. Invite them to describe their experience, and consider what you might need to reconsider depending on their reply.

After the conversation, ask yourself what entered the discussion that you had previously left unexplored. What do you now understand more clearly, and what still needs checking? Agree on a practical next step, whether that is clarifying responsibilities, changing an arrangement or making an expectation explicit.

The useful outcome is a better basis for action. In this example, that begins when the manager can describe what happened, acknowledge their contribution and hear how the colleague experienced it.

What have you left out of a conversation that might help you understand the situation more fully?

Related reading

• What Shapes Your Priorities?
• Practical Wisdom: Why Strengths Are Not Enough
• What Does This Situation Ask of Me?

Sources and further reading

[1] Oriana Bandiera, Stephen Hansen, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun (2020), “CEO Behavior and Firm Performance”, Journal of Political Economy, 128(4). The study records the activities of 1,114 CEOs of manufacturing firms in six countries. Its 70% figure concerns interaction, including email; it does not measure a proportion of leadership conducted through spoken conversation.

[2] David Bohm (1996), On Dialogue, edited by Lee Nichol, Routledge. See also the “On Dialogue” text reproduced by the David Bohm Society. This reference informs the discussion of examining assumptions.

[3] Eugene T. Gendlin (1978), Focusing. See “An Introduction to Focusing: Six Steps”, an excerpt from the book available through the International Focusing Institute. This reference informs the discussion of attending to an unclear bodily felt sense and finding words or images that fit it.

[4] Eugene T. Gendlin (1969), “Focusing”, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 6(1), 4–15. This paper discusses words, imagery and interpersonal responses in relation to experiential change.

The workplace scenario, dialogue and practical exercise are original illustrations. The connections drawn between the authors’ ideas and leadership practice are interpretations offered here, rather than findings from a study of this scenario or a complete presentation of either approach.

Illustration created with AI for this article.