Writing in organisations

I recently had two experiences on consecutive days that left very different impressions on me. The first was a sparkling conversation with a colleague (John Higgins) over tea in a café. During and after our talk, I kept glimpsing possibilities for future collaboration and conversation. And we parted having agreed that we would organise an informal ‘café-style’ gathering in the summer, focused on ‘speaking truth to power’ (John’s research subject). 

The second experience was a seminar for first-year undergraduates that I ran in the same week (as a ‘guest lecturer’) – on essay writing.  It went pretty smoothly as far as I could tell, but I couldn’t help noticing that it didn’t leave me buzzing like the café conversation just described. The setting was bizarre:  a cramped square room at the university, packed with computers on long grey tables (known appropriately as ‘the workstation room’).

Several other factors contributed to a mild sense of dissatisfaction. Before the seminar I had spent considerable time and thought on preparation; not so much what I was going to tell the students, but what activities I could offer them and which questions might stimulate their thinking. At the appointed time (11am), only one student was in the room; the others arrived in dribs and drabs. So I waited about 15 minutes before beginning, by which time about a dozen had turned up (out of some 20 on the course).

I started by offering them a wide view of writing, quoting one of my favourite authors (Verlyn Klinkenborg): "Talking is natural, writing is not". As I spoke, I noticed that some of the students looked alert, others gave the impression they hadn’t slept enough. And when I posed questions, some spoke up while others remained quiet. As I walked back to my bike afterwards, I noticed that, although I was reasonably pleased with how it had gone, I wasn’t feeling especially inspired or energised by the experience. 

The following day I went to my desk in the morning, as usual, and wrote freely about these two experiences, using just pen and paper, without pausing to correct anything. I could have just thought about these two human encounters, or discussed them with someone else, but the exercise of reflective writing (and rewriting) clarified and developed my thinking. It reaffirmed to me that, given a choice, I will nearly always choose an informal conversation with a colleague over the alternative of standing in front of a class. My reflections also helped me work out what I might do differently in future, and even what really matters to me in life.  If I choose to continue teaching, I will try to make it as much as possible like a café conversation.

There is of course nothing new about reflecting on experience. 16th century essayist Michel de Montaigne described how his own mind’s “principal and most difficult study is the study of itself”, adding:  

“For anyone who knows how to probe himself and to do so vigorously, reflection [méditer in French] is a mighty endeavour and a full one… The greatest of souls make [it] their vocation, ‘quibus vivere est cogitare’*; there is nothing we can do longer than think, no activity to which we can devote ourselves more regularly nor more easily.”

​*'For them, to think is to live' (Cicero)

Related reading

"Several short sentences about writing", by Verlyn Klinkeborg (2013) 

“On three kinds of social intercourse” (“De trois commerces”), essay by Michel de Montaigne ​(1533-1592)

Reading time 2-3 minutes

In October, I was lucky enough to go to Taiwan, a place I had never visited before, for a trip that was part work, part fun. My highlights:  conversations in teahouses, a walk in the hills outside Taipei (see above), bathing in hot pools, and being part of a performance in a modern museum in the city of Taichung. 

On one particular day, I also ran a seminar at the University of Tapei on the subject of “Writing Experience” (deliberately ambiguous, since it could mean either “the experience of writing” or “writing about experience”, or both).

The people I was speaking to were interested in bringing their own experience into their writing.  At one point, I invited them to spend five minutes writing freely about some themes I had been talking about (see photo below).

This summer we were engulfed by plums and greengages from our French garden. After making plum tarts, plum coulis, plum puree and plum jam, we still had kilos and kilos. So my husband went round to neighbours’ houses with bags of fruit and drove our red 2CV down the lane to friends in a neighbouring hamlet.

We soon noticed how much these small acts of giving strengthened our local relationships (perhaps obvious to anyone who has lived in the country). Each time we turned up at someone’s house with plums, a friendly conversation started; one couple spontaneously invited us over for an aperitif the next evening. I even gave a kilo to the woman who serves in the village shop, and the irony of ‘giving food to your grocer’ gave us both something to smile about.

It’s much harder to give stuff away when you don’t have enough of it yourself. In her brilliant novel “Half of a yellow sun”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes perfectly the dilemmas people face in a situation of scarcity.

Though the book is set during the terrible war in Biafra in the 1960s when some three million people starved to death, it’s not relentlessly bloody or violent. Instead the author shows us the kinds of ‘micro-interactions’ that all add up to create a wartime society.

Towards the end of the book, Olanna, a previously well-off academic, is repeatedly confronted with the dilemma of whether or not to give food away when her own family is close to starvation. Together with her husband and baby, she has been forced to move into a single room in a multi-occupancy building. An unsmiling neighbour, Mama Oji, wastes no time in warning Olanna that all the other residents are ‘accomplished thieves’. 

“Lock your door even when you are just going to urinate," she advises.

Meanwhile, Olanna’s baby soon makes friends with a little girl, Adanna, who has liquid-looking boils on her arms and a flea-ridden dog. When Adanna’s mother (Mama Adanna) notices cooking going on in Olanna’s room, she comes over holding her enamel bowl:

“Please, give me small soup.” 

“No, we don’t have enough,” says Olanna. 

Then, thinking of little Adanna’s only dress, which is made from the sack used to package relief food, she scoops some of the thin, meatless soup into the bowl. She repeats this generous act the next day, but on the third day Mama Oji is in the room and screams “Stop giving her your food! This is what she does with every new tenant.” Mama Oji adds that Mama Adanna is not a refugee but an indigene who could be farming cassava instead of begging others for food. The scene concludes with Mama Oji shouting “Shut up your stinking mouth!” at the other woman.

What this scene tells me is, first, that it's much harder to give stuff away when you don’t have enough of it yourself. And second, the decision to be generous can involve many conflicting impulses. It also makes me wonder whether I have ever made a present of something I would have preferred to keep for myself. I do recall some small examples of spontaneously giving away much-loved cashmere scarves to friends, knowing they were just the kind of thing they loved. But these examples seem piffling compared to what went on in Biafra.
 
So, what can those of us living in a wealthy society give away, apart from ‘things’ that many can afford to buy for themselves?” How about time and attention? When we give those, we don’t really even lose anything. But sometimes it feels as though we might. For instance, if we take time to listen to someone, we might have to put off something else that feels more important (for me it’s often my writing). What’s more, to listen really attentively, we have to stop distracting ourselves by silently preparing our next interjection. This can be hard.

It seems that being generous, whether with things or non-things, can be highly complex. While it's partly about compassion, it’s also entangled with other aspects of human relating, such as friendship, our sense of social obligation and even our identity – we might, for instance, want to be seen as kind and generous.
 
It’s also noticeable that a generous gesture often prompts a delightful and unexpected response. A few days after we gave away our surplus plums, more than one neighbour came round with a jar of jam they themselves had made out of them. 

Related reading

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

One day in my early 20s I was walking down Chelsea Manor Street in London and, as I passed the greasy spoon café (no longer there), a man with a strong London accent came to the door and proclaimed “My name’s Bill and I’m not married.”  I continued on my way but I had to laugh out loud at his humour and directness. I even felt a bit flattered.

This memory was triggered by reading and reflecting on Lisa Smith’s delightful story “Auld Lang Syne” recently published in the Guardian newspaper. Rufus, an elegantly dressed black man in his 70s, finds himself spending New Year’s Eve in Brixton police station, amongst drug dealers, drunks and prison officers. He clearly notices precisely how each female member of staff he encounters looks. For example, while he is standing in queue waiting to see the Custody Sergeant, this is what he is thinking:

He estimated the police lady behind the desk was in her early-to-mid forties. Her dark hair was scraped into a tight knot on the top of her head, making her face look pinched, severe. Rufus thought that with a little rouge on her cheeks she might be pretty, he’d dated a couple of white women back in the seventies. He smiled at the brunette. She didn’t smile back.

This short passage brought another memory back, this time from my late teens. I was working behind a bar in London SE1 (before it became trendy) when a customer suggested I take off my spectacles. I think he even leaned over and took them off himself and then said something like "You're actually quite pretty." Again, I think I felt somewhat flattered, but this time I couldn’t help thinking of the old, disheartening saying “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.” (Glasses have since become much more trendy.)

Going back to Lisa Smith's story, at the police station Rufus also meets Dr Kwarshie, the doctor on duty, a black woman. He notices how much she resembles his daughter, with her round face, dimpled cheeks and almond-shaped eyes. 

The story left me wondering what to think of Rufus and his interest in women's looks. It doesn’t feel at all black and white (pun not intended). His conversations in the police station reveal a rather charming and honest person who has ‘a love of rum, dominoes, gambling and women’. He is currently on his fourth wife, half his age, and has been arrested because of her allegation that he assaulted her (it never becomes clear exactly what happened between them). But do I condemn him (no)? Would I want to avoid meeting him (no)? Do I take into account the culture he has grown up in (probably yes)?

And what about the two strangers who paid me compliments when I was younger? Do I condemn them? Certainly at the time, I had no desire to get to know either of them any better, but Bill's words still give me amusement today. (I notice now that I have no recollection of Bill's face or his figure. Just his words and the precise location of the café. I even know I was walking north, away from the river and towards the King’s Road.)

Ironically, not long before that experience, I had come across the ‘women’s lib’ movement (this was the 1970s). We resented the way women were viewed as ‘sex objects’ and how their bodies were displayed in advertising and tabloid newspapers. Nevertheless, when someone paid me a compliment, with humour, I couldn't feel cross.

To me, these kinds of incidents are relatively harmless, though they do reveal something about the men involved. My conclusion:  I don't think every compliment made in public by a man to a woman is automatically sexist or 'predatory'. It all depends on the circumstances. ​


Related reading: 

"Auld Lang Syne" by Lisa Smith. This short story won the BAME short story prize in 2017, which is supported by The Guardian newspaper and by the publisher 4th Estate.

In recent conversations I have noticed how some people seldom if ever ask a question. Instead they launch into expounding what they think about the world or whatever interests them, without checking whether I, or others listening, seem engaged.

In the past month alone, I have experienced this at least three times and the people in question were both young and older. One of the older people was extremely well-versed in current affairs, another expressed passionate views about the state of the earth, and the younger one had strong opinions about the way society and education should be run.

All three happened to be men. I only know one or two women who monologue in this way. But not all the men that I know favour monologue over dialogue. Far from it – I have many male colleagues and friends who ask great questions and listen attentively to the answers. But still, there does seem to be a pattern. One of my friends told me that when she meets a man for the first time she applies the ‘man test’: “Did he ask any questions?” Apparently there is a word for this behaviour: 'mansplaining'!

My response to habitual ‘monologuers’ has evolved over the years. Earlier in my life I criticised it, but now I find myself trying to understand it. Could it be that these people simply weren’t brought up to be inquisitive about others? One man told me he felt intrusive asking people personal questions about their lives. Or perhaps my initial assumption – that  no questions means someone is not interested in me or my thinking – was flawed?

If (as I think) human beings co-create patterns like monologuing, we can also disrupt them – e.g. by interjecting, by bending the conversation towards a subject that matters to us at that moment, or by simply walking away.

I discussed this with a male friend recently. “Surely,” he said, “if you felt passionate about something, you would talk about it.” “Well, not necessarily,” I responded, “I tend to wait until I am invited to share my experience." I almost added: "And if I do speak, I want the other person to concentrate on what I am saying, not to look for the first opportunity to draw the conversation back to themselves or their interests.”

Strangely enough, I have also  noticed lately that it is possible to ask too many questions. Journalists and researchers (including me) are particularly prone to this bias. Occasionally I find myself at the receiving end of a succession of curious questions, and I notice that it can quickly become exhausting, trying to work out my answers. I sometimes find myself wishing the flow of questions would abate, so I could ask a question myself and shift attention onto the other person.

I wonder if  perhaps there is a range of personal tendencies or personality types  – from those who habitually talk without much prompting, to those who typically inquire first. Maybe it’s a bit like autism – we are all somewhere ‘on the spectrum’. Nevertheless, I do think ultimately that a bit more inquiry and dialogue would make the world a better place. 

Over the years, I have benefited from many courses in communication skills (I have even run some myself). They have all been useful, but there are limits to what training can achieve. 

First, the very existence of such courses may encourage people to think that communication is all about techniques, and that there are experts out there who can tell or show us how to do it better.

Second, in practice the picture is always much wider than the individual’s skills. People communicate in a specific situation and there is always a history to it. So general principles and role playing may be inadequate to bring about the changes desired.

And third, if a course is focused on just one type of communication (e.g. either face-to-face or written), it may fail to address some of the most interesting dilemmas we face, such as the choices we are forced to make between email, telephone and face-to-face contact.

For some time, I have felt increasingly drawn to other sources of insight and illumination, especially:  (1) paying attention, in the moment,  to my own experience of communication; (2) reflective writing; and (3) using stories and literature to gain a deeper understanding of human relating. These three methods, if one can call them that, are well suited to exploring the complexities and subtleties of human relating. (I prefer the term ‘human relating’ to 'communication', as the ‘-ing’ suggests something that is in movement rather than a static ‘thing’.)

So, what would I suggest to a young professional eager to get better at communication, whether or not it  is mediated by smartphones and other gadgets? For a start, I do think it’s worth taking every interesting training opportunity offered by your employer, whether it’s about public speaking, business writing, coaching or something else.

There are also some more unusual approaches to developing better conversational skills.  ‘Nonviolent Communication’, ‘SAVI’ and Time To Think™ immediately spring to mind. I’ve recently looked into all three and have found each one useful, up to a point. In particular, one of the great things about Time To Think™ (even though I’m not so keen on the trademark) is that it involves taking turns to (i) think aloud and (ii) listen. This not only allows you to practise your listening skills but also encourages you to work out what you think, without interruption.

If you want to go beyond courses, here’s a bit more about the methods I mentioned earlier:

1. The art of noticing. Practise consciously paying attention to your everyday experience of human relating.  Do you feel at ease in the midst of a conversation? Or is something troubling you that you don’t feel able to mention? Could you find a way of bringing it up?  That might just shift something between you and the person you are talking to (as long as you do it thoughtfully – e.g. describing your own experience rather than blaming or complaining).

2. The wisdom of fiction. If you sense that a novel or film has depths in it that you would like to explore further, take a closer look. I favour reading/watching it again and then using reflective writing to explore what struck me. Or simply cast you mind back to a particular scene or memorable moment and associate freely in your mind - what was going on between the lines, do you recall a similar experience from your own life?

​3. If you like writing, take pen and paper and put down your thoughts and musings. No need to share these with anybody else; just write freely for yourself. You might be amazed at what emerges.


Related reading

“Beyond communication skills” by Alison Donaldson & Michael MacMahon. Published in e-Organisations & People, Summer 2016, Vol. 23, No. 2. Download PDF.

Trust between humans always has both history and context. Even when we first meet somebody, context plays a part. We may already have heard something about them, or we may be influenced by their status or job title – e.g. we probably respond differently to a nurse, a businessman, a teacher or a homeless person. So in my view, if we want to understand how trust works, abstract definitions have limited value. Perhaps what St Augustin said about time could also be said about trust:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

If we can’t define trust satisfactorily, can we at least begin to understand how it develops between people – and between people and institutions – over time? That is what Rob Warwick and I explored recently with a group in Brighton, by using stories, group conversations and writing to stimulate thinking.

Overall, the day prompted me to reflect on how human relationships, and trust in particular, ebb and flow. If you cast your mind back to how one of your relationships has developed over time, you may recall some striking or memorable moments along the way. Perhaps something happened to unsettle or even destroy the trust between you. Maybe you managed to rebuild it. Maybe you didn’t.

Not surprisingly, I noticed just this kind of ebb and flow during the workshop. For example, I felt warmer towards people who smiled or responded constructively to something I said. In contrast, when someone spoke in a complaining tone (as if they were a consumer who had bought a faulty product), I noticed my trust in that person sag.

At the end of the day, I came away wondering again whether it isn’t a bit strange to focus solely on this “thing” called trust, when trust is only one of several aspects of human relating. What about fear, sadness, irritation, enthusiasm, love, disappointment, exclusion, rivalry or anger? Surely these all deserve our attention.

Talking of anger, I recall how an old friend once criticised me angrily at the breakfast table (there were five of us in the room at the time). His words felt pretty much out of the blue. The memory of that exchange has lingered in my mind ever since. I would still trust him in most things, but in that moment something precious was lost, and I have gone back to it in my memory many times. 

One person at the Brighton workshop wondered whether trusting someone could be understood as “anticipating that they won’t do harm to us”. I suspect we just need to feel safe enough with other people to be able to “go on together”. 

Note: The event was the AMED writers' annual workshop in Brighton on 20 May 2016: Writing, Conversation and Trust: a day of exploration by the seaside. The original research was funded by Roffey Park.

Related reading
​
​Alison Donaldson & Rob Warwick: The emergence of trusting relationships: Stories and Reflections. Val Hammond Research Paper for Roffey Park, 2016. Available free as PDF.

Alison Donaldson & Rob Warwick: Trust and the emotional bank account: using stories to prompt learning. Strategic Briefing for Croner Publications, 2016. Available free online.

Conversation… we all do it. At best, it can be lively and creative and at worst infuriating or just dull. Last week I spent two days with a group exploring one approach to understanding how conversations work and what we can do to shift the frustrating patterns that sometimes develop.

The occasion was a workshop in London run by Rowena Davis, a friend and consultant who is very perceptive and skilled at working with people. The method she introduced us to was “SAVI”, which stands for System for Analysing Verbal Interaction. It involves identifying certain common “behaviours”, recognising frustrating or repetitive patterns, and then trying to shift them. The aim is to have more productive and satisfying conversations, whether at work, at home, with friends or anywhere else. The method can also be applied to “email conversations”, although without being able to hear the other person’s tone of voice this can be much harder to do.

Here’s just one example of a common pattern of conversation:  Person A complains and complains about something; B offers suggestions and solutions but A just continues complaining. The process repeats in a kind of loop and a “stuck” pattern has established itself.

To get out of this loop, B could try out one of many possible new responses – and choosing the most promising one is in itself as much an art as a science. For example, B could “mirror” A’s feelings by saying something like “You seem to be sad/angry/frustrated about this” and see whether that helps. Or they could express what kind of feelings they themselves experienced while they were listening to A moan. And/or they could try summarising or paraphrasing what A said to show they had listened and understood. Or they could just offer to listen attentively for a set time period, such as five or ten minutes, after which A and B might both be ready to turn their attention to a different topic. Whichever option is chosen, B cannot be certain what A’s next response will be. But it’s worth a try.

For me, the workshop highlighted how often we just react to each other. For example, when one person speaks in an angry tone, the other may respond fiercely or self-righteously and the conversation can go downhill from there. Or people can get locked into a pattern with each discounting the other’s opinion (“Yes, but” is a common response) and then going on to state their own position again, and again. Provided we notice patterns like this in the moment, we may be able to buy ourselves time by trying something different or responding in a new way.

Since the workshop, some of my own conversations have started to become noticeably more satisfying and constructive. And some need further work! For example, the other day I was in the passenger seat of a car when I noticed we seemed to be accelerating towards a young woman on a bike on a mini-roundabout just ahead of us. My dialogue with the driver went roughly like this:

Me (alarmed, in a raised voice): “Careful!”

Driver (crossly): “I saw her!”

Me (crossly):  “I was just trying to warn you. If you’d hit her, you would have killed her.”

Driver (crossly): “No I wouldn’t. Do you think I wanted to kill her?”

Me (crossly): “That’s a ridiculous question.”

By now, I felt so angry I could hardly hold myself back from swearing at the driver. But, thinking about the workshop, I managed to keep my mouth shut, still seething, while I looked for pen and paper so I could record the exchange and think about how else I could have responded. After I put down my pen, I decided to explain what I was doing, and we went on to talk relatively calmly about our little spat. We agreed it would have been almost impossible to avoid the initial exchange (“Careful!” and “I saw her!”). Those first reflexes felt uncontrollable in the moment. But after that, instead of continuing to fight back, perhaps I could have said “I’m sorry I shouted but I was really frightened.” There is no guarantee, but maybe this would have helped.

Understanding how verbal exchanges like these work is useful for anyone interested in complexity and emergence. "Complexity thinking" is very much about how change emerges from human interaction. We all know that conversations are capable of giving rise to conflict, mistrust and mutual blaming, but they can also bring about learning, innovation, understanding and trust.

So let’s do all we can to increase our understanding of conversation and dialogue. But let’s also remind ourselves that we can’t change other people – we can only try out new responses ourselves. 

Related reading

• If you want to find out more about SAVI, go to www.savicommunications.com/index.html. If I had only seen the SAVI website, I might not have signed up for the workshop. What convinced me to do so was my trust in Rowena and my conviction that conversational (dialogical) skills are vital for human cooperation and survival. So don’t be put off by the trademarking or the (for my taste) over-scientific language – it is sprinkled with words like “systematic”, “objective analysis” and “coding” (or by the reference to 1940s Information Theory, which in my view has serious limitations when applied to human beings… ).
• If you’re interested in doing a SAVI workshop and willing to travel, the next one is in Bucharest 17-19 March 2016 –  www.comunicareesentiala.ro/savi2/
• For a different approach, see “Nonviolent communication” by Marshall B Rosenberg, and www.cnvc.org/
• For a complexity perspective on conversation, see Patricia Shaw's book “Changing conversations”. Also “Learning to talk to one another – politics and practical judgement” (blog post by Chris Mowles, University of Herts).
• For more academic “dialogical” thinking, see “Conversational realities revisited” by John Shotter, or just visit www.johnshotter.com/

Postscript

SAVI looks mainly at what we perceive directly in conversation, especially words and tone. It doesn’t delve beneath the surface in the way that, say, psychoanalysis would. But I think that is also its strength. It takes appearance seriously and is not over-theoretical.