I recently led a masterclass on dialogue in high performing teams for a group of partners from one of the Big Four accounting firms. After sharing the four dialogic actions model (more on Move, Follow, Oppose and Bystand shortly), one of participants grabbed me at the end of the session. He clearly had something to say.
“The problem we have on our monthly calls,” he said, looking me directly in the eye, “Is that all the partners are making Moves but no one builds on what others have said.”
We’ll come to this pattern of interaction (and how to intervene) below. For this leader, in this moment, there was a sense of him having “seen the light.”
“People are vying for attention. They make Moves to outdo one another. They want to show that they’re the smartest person in the room. It gets more and more aggressive and I haven’t had a clue about what to do about it. At least I can now see it.”
To harvest collective intelligence, we have to see the patterns of our interactions that inhibit productive dialogue. We then have to intervene to make those patterns more effective so that we build a shared understanding rather than put a lid on possibilities. As David Weinburger has famously said, “The smartest person in the room is the room” – but only if we get the room working rather than people competing with one another.
Reading the Room
A powerful lens to use in order to understand what’s happening as people communicate in small groups is Structural Dynamics. David Kantor, a psychologist who initially worked with families, gave this name to his body of work, which unpacks how face-to-face communication does or does not work. There are several layers to his model but we will focus on the first level of four ‘action propensities’ here.
Also known as the four ‘dialogic actions’, these are different types of ‘speech act’ that we use when we’re in conversation. You can map out any conversation, regardless of content, using these speech acts. Each one brings a different energy and answers a distinct question:
- A Move sets the direction, proposes a way forward, makes a suggestion. It answers: What needs to be said?
- A Follow offers support, shows enthusiasm, develops ideas. It answers: What needs to be done or completed?
- An Oppose provides correction, tests thinking, states disagreement. It answers: What needs to be challenged?
- A Bystand brings perspective, makes observations, connects dots. It answers: What needs to be named?
When all four actions are present and in dynamic balance, dialogue flows. A team can then harvest its collective intelligence so that the whole really does become greater than the sum of its parts. When one or more of these actions goes missing, a dialogue starts to derail.
Seeing stuck sequences
Establishing a dynamic balance across the four dialogic actions sounds simple but it is not easy. What helps is to understand that speech acts often occur in recognisable patterns, such as a series of Moves. When a pattern keeps on occurring, Kantor called this a stuck sequence. Kantor named several of these in his book Reading the Room. All these repeating patterns are rooted in rigidity rather than fluidity and keep many teams a long way from accessing their collective intelligence. Here are three of the most common patterns:
1. Serial Moving – the Move-Move sequence
One person makes a Move, which is met with another Move and then another Move. Nobody Follows, Opposes or Bystands. People fire off ideas at a fast pace, leaving little or no room for listening and compete with one another, needing to have their point of view prevail.
2. Courteous Compliance – the Move-Follow sequence
A Move – which is often made by the most senior person in the room – is met with polite Follows. Everyone appears aligned but vital differences stay unaddressed as Opposes and Bystands are held back. Energy that could power innovation gets trapped in maintaining pseudo-agreement. A group prioritises comfort and conviviality over truth telling, smoothing over conflict, avoiding difficult issues and deferring to authority or consensus.
3. Point-Counterpoint – the Move-Oppose sequence
Move and Oppose bat back and forth with no Bystand to bridge them. People dig in and become more entrenched. Meetings become verbal battlegrounds. Members defend turf and reject others’ ideas to stay on top. Communication becomes a contest, not a conduit for collective intelligence. In the fractious atmosphere, winners and losers emerge as a result of a ‘might is right’ mindset.
Kantor also writes about the silenced or ‘disabled’ Bystander, where the perspective that could unstick the system is never voiced. This is not so much a sequence but a condition that sits underneath several of the patterns above.
In a similar vein, Kantor names the pattern of Covert Opposition. The Oppose still happens but outside the meeting room, in corridors and side conversations. It is the shadow side of Courteous Compliance. Whilst in the room people Follow the Move made (often by the leader), outside the room, they pick apart the Move with their gripes, complaints and backstabs. Covert opposition can also be expressed in action, for example, by implementing a decision in a way that wasn’t agreed as a ‘protest’ or not taking any action at all. This is often the reason that decisions unravel after a meeting.
Doing the dance
When any of these patterns take hold, dialogue contracts and collective intelligence drains away. Teams become busy but not connected; active yet unaligned. A team might demonstrate different patterns in different moments although there is often a dominant dynamic.
Seeing and naming the group’s stuck pattern and then bringing in the missing ‘action’ – one that produces more balance and frees up energy – can set a group onto a path of more generative dialogue. Each of these stuck patterns has one or more of the actions consistently missing.
Returning to the earlier example, one way to intervene in the Serial Moving sequence is to bring in the Bystand. Naming the pattern could look like:
“We’re all doing the same thing: making our own proposal regardless of what others have said. How about we slow down and take our time to listen so we can build on others’ ideas?”
You might also invite someone else to make an observation, particularly if you have a sense of there being a ‘disabled’ Bystander in the room:
“Would somebody be willing to say what they’re noticing? What’s the bigger picture we need to see here?”
In a similar vein, other stuck sequences also need to be skilfully interrupted and disrupted: A single speech act ‘played’ at the right moment can fork a conversation down a different path entirely.
Towards the end of the session with the partners, I shared the notion of ‘style-flex’ from Michael A. Genovese’s book The Future of Leadership (2016). He writes about how great leaders “can adjust their dance to the music being played… They recognise when to push and when to back away, when to lead and when to follow, when to speak and when to remain quiet, when to force the action and when to refrain.”
When I asked for their key take-away from the session, one partner summed it up as:
“Do the dance!”
Old school leadership was about making Moves and Opposes. The leadership needed now is to have the flexibility to be able to ‘play’ whichever dialogic action – Move, Follow, Oppose Bystand – is needed for a constructive dialogue. As I wrote in my book, How to Have Meaningful Conversations, a leader who expands their repertoire and decides how best to bring in the missing action enables collective intelligence to be harvested.
Over to you
- Can you identify which of these stuck sequences might be at play in a team you work in or with?
- How might you intervene to bring more balance to the dialogue to that all four actions are present?
References
Genovese, M. A. (2015) The Future of Leadership: Leveraging Influence in an Age of Hyper-Change (Leadership: Research and Practice.) Routledge
Kantor, D. (2012) Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders. Jossey-Bass.
Rozenthuler, S. (2012) How to Have Meaningful Conversation: Seven Strategies for Talking About What Matters Most. Wakins.
