While it often seems that people are just speaking for the sake of it, I want to talk a bit about conversations that are directed towards a specific purpose, and how we can adjust our listening to support a group to come to an outcome through conversation. When we speak with others, we are (ideally) trying to create a kind of shared understanding and meaning between us, but because we are all approaching the conversation from our own perspectives, worldviews and biases, we can get lost long before anything coherent emerges.

Having a few mental models that can help orient you in these situations can help to shape a conversation in a way where real progress can emerge, with the obvious caveat that trying to force-fit a conversation into the wrong frame can be as unproductive as using no model at all. A little nuance goes a long way with this.

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Here we address dialogue with the purpose of understanding a problem, or imagining a solution. As a listener, I have often heard groups talk past each other as they try to work through a problem, and the issue is often not just the way in which they were listening, but what they were listening for.

I offer two models here from MGTaylor, which are often used to design conversations. I won’t go into great detail on the models themselves, but will instead focus on how they inform the structure of conversation, and how they can help us make sense of what we are hearing. I first came across the use of one of these models as a listening lens from Dan Newman, who used the Vantage Points model to identify when participants were talking about different “layers” of the same system, and from Kelvy Bird, who would use the Creating the Problem model to create a visual structure as she recorded aspirational conversations.

In all of these cases, you can use these models to guide your listening in a few different ways, depending on your role in the conversation. As a listener or participant in the conversation, they can help orient you to where the other participants in the conversation are coming from, and how you might come to alignment. As a facilitator, you can use these models to discern where a group might be sliding into dysfunction, or how you might need to shift the conversation to come to resolution. As a graphic recorder, you can use these models as a way of reflecting the deeper structures of the conversation in order to reveal to a group the gaps in their thinking.

Vantage Points - Listening for Coherence

The first of these models is the Vantage Points model, which is meant to express the connections between the purpose of an organization, the things that it ends up doing, and everything in between. In professional settings, so many of our conversations focus on how we should work and what we should be working on, and sometimes, why we’re working on what we’re working on (a simplification, sure). The answer may lie at one of those levels, or at all of them, but be different depending on what vantage point we’re using to frame the issue. So we can listen, we can focus on the person, we can make connections…but can we solve the problem? Are we actually talking about the same thing?

Applied to these kinds of conversations, the Vantage Points model suggests that work unfolds across a number of layers…that there is a logical structure to what we do if all our decisions are in harmony and work as a system. An organization exists for a reason, organizes itself to do that work, sets rules to keep itself on track, charts a path for how it will achieve its goals, sets steps to achieve those goals, marshals its resources to take those steps and undertakes the day-to-day work to get it done. Each of the parts in that “stack” need to make sense for the whole thing to work (and if you missed it, they map to the layers in the model at the top of the post), and if the decisions and work at each level align with all the others, everything goes smoothly.

Based on time, personality, complexity, size, and our own particular role, we might focus on one part of that structure, and lose sight of the others. Likewise, when the world changes and we need to adapt, small changes at one level might have implications at others.

I might be focused on building a website for my company, and trying to make a simple decision on where to host my content. This is a tactical decision, it will affect the simple tasks I end up doing in the future (how easy will it be to post things?) but might undermine my strategic intentions (does it connect with the audience that matters most to me if I build it one place, or another?) or may conflict with the very purpose of my company (am I in the business of making content? Is that what we set out to do in the first place?).

A simple conversation with colleagues about a website, then, might involve thinking about our shared enterprise at multiple levels at once. I want to talk about how hard it is to upload new content, but IT is thinking about the infrastructure, while marketing is worried about our brand standards and strategy is starting to wonder why we’re doing this at all, when we’re actually in the business of selling staplers. But the conversation is just about “website”.

As a listener, try to tune in to see if individuals in problem solving discussions are actually all having the same conversation. The meeting might be about “Deciding where to host our content”, but one person might be talking about time management, another about user experience, another about customer acquisition and the fourth wondering about why we produce content at all. They all think they are having the same conversation, but because they are each speaking from a different vantage point, the conversation just seems to go in circles.

This same dysfunction can happen within an individual. I might seek advice of my peers on which accounting software I should be using for my company. This could be a lively debate about which ones manage exchange rates and expenses effectively. Ok, not that lively. But I appear to my peers quite fixated on this problem.

As they coach me through this choice, one might wonder, am I fixated on tasks and details I can control in accounting because I’m afraid to focus and spend my time on the harder question of how to bring revenue into my company?

Through attuned listening, we can pick up clues as to where disconnects lie.

Using the Vantage Points model as we listen can help us discern which level our conversation should be on. If we have collective clarity on one level, we can use that to tackle the next, but if I am talking about what while you are talking about why, we will both walk away frustrated.

Defining the Problem

Even when a group is engaging at the same level, a common struggle is to accurately define the problem that they are trying to solve. A typical back and forth might be between statements about how they wish things could be, and complaints about how things are now. These conversations can quickly begin to feel circular, as many of the points will often feel disconnected from one another.

But just because someone starts a sentence with “Well, the problem is…”, doesn’t mean that what they say next is the problem. The model we can use to tune our listening in these situations is the “Defining the Problem” model, from MGTaylor.

This is not only a useful lens to use during a problem-solving conversation, but also when you’re scoping a project or trying to hone in on a set of objectives.

The conceit of this model is that when we identify undesirable aspects of our reality, those elements we identify aren’t necessarily problems; they are conditions. They might not be conditions we are pleased with, but they are not necessarily the problem to be solved. That “problem” emerges when we define what we would like the conditions to be, that is, when we define a vision for that particular element of our reality. The problem, then, is whatever stands in the way of the conditions changing to meet our vision.

When we tune our ear using this model, we can begin to sort what we’re hearing between the conditions that people are upset about, and the aspirations they have for how things might be.

I’ve always felt that you can save a lot of energy by avoiding the trap of solving the wrong problem really well. Often, when someone in a group becomes fixated on a particular condition being “the problem”, it is because they have an unstated or undeclared idea in their head of what an ideal state for the issue might be. Someone else might find that condition to be equally problematic, but for entirely different reasons.

When participating in a conversation that is meant to define the problem, it is worth splitting out - either in your head, or explicitly with the group - which conditions, in particular, people think are problematic, but also what the elements of a desirable end state might look like. Breaking the conversation up in this way can allow you to find where the actual problems lie - between the conditions we agree we are unhappy about, and the vision we share for the future.

I have previously mentioned the importance of shared intent in group process, and I view the ability to effectively discern “the problem” as very central to finding that intent. A bug to you might be a feature to me. Being able to structure our listening around this type of model can help us navigate to some intent, and also keep us from getting hijacked by control statements like “…well the real problem is…” where participants try to capture the narrative.

Treat each “condition” as a point of inquiry, not a definitive answer. Listen if there is agreement on the conditions. Ask about what “good” might look like, and if there is agreement there, but keep in mind that if either side of that equation is unclear or not shared, then you probably haven’t found “the problem.”

And so…

As you might have guessed, you might be using both of these models at the same time, and possibly others. There is a third model I will explore separately that can help navigate the question of intent, but two models, for now, should be plenty.

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