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Personal Impact and Influence – Push and Pull on The Conversation Control Map

Guest post by: Clive Hook

Article Overview: Behavioural Intelligence is the art of noticing what behaviours are operating in an interaction or conversation, deciding and then choosing the most useful and appropriate behaviour to do next - and you can Push or Pull. Either option could be right or wrong. Behavioural Intelligence means considering the context within which you are operating and making the behavioural choice based on what would best achieve your objectives or desired outcomes.

Personal Impact and Influence – Push and Pull on The Conversation Control Map

Behavioural Intelligence is the art of noticing what behaviours are operating in an interaction or conversation, deciding and then choosing the most useful and appropriate behaviour to do next.

Charles Margerison, in his book “If Only I’d Said...”, introduced the idea of a structure or map to notice where the conversation is. We have developed a graphic form of the Conversation Control Map as a tool or cue card I use extensively in training negotiators, managers and leaders. This is a mental model - something you should see every time you blink when you are in purposeful and mindful mode in problem solving or decision making conversations.

The two axes are Specific v General and Problem v Solution and the time dimension is Past, Present and Future. You can find more details with a search for “Conversation Control Map”. If you have the map in front of you or can imagine the image you can see four squares in a classic 2 x 2. For the moment think of it as a map of four fields on a farm.

“You can a lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” goes the old saying. Imagine instead the horse is in one field and you want him in another (where the water is). What are your options? You could stay in your field and call or tempt him to join you. You could go into his field and then either attach a lead rein and pull or (generally a bad idea with horses) you could get behind him and push.

In Conversation Control and using the skills and disciplines of Behavioural Intelligence you notice where the conversation (horse) is at the moment, where you want it to be and then choose the behaviour to make the movement happen.

So if the conversation is lodged in the General/Problem Quadrant and you feel you’ve got enough about the generalities of the situation, your most likely option is to get more specific information about the extent or scope of the problem and/or the potential causes before you move to make a decision on what to do next. So your job is to move the conversation into the Specific/Problem Quadrant.

A Push behaviour is where data, ideas or information comes from you and a Pull behaviour is where you work to extract those things from others.

The Push option would be something like “Go and get more information about the potential causes” or “I think what’s happened here is...” or “I’ve seen this kind of thing before - this is the issue”

The Pull option would look more like “Tell me what you know about the possible causes” or “How often has this kind of thing happened before?” or “What’s your thinking on what’s actually going on here?”

Either option could be right or wrong. Behavioural Intelligence means considering the context within which you are operating and making the behavioural choice based on what would best achieve your objectives or desired outcomes.

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Article Tags: behavioural intelligence, communication skills, conversation control, decision making, getting buy in, influencing skills, influencing style, managing meetings, negotiation skills, stakeholder management, strategic influencing



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