Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1 – Four Conversations in a Successful Workplace
1. The Importance of Conversations
2. Some Conversations Slow Things Down, Others Speed Things Up
3. Six Limitations to a Successful Workplace
4. Conversations: Your Personal Advantage
5. Key Points
Chapter 2 – Initiative Conversations: Create a Future
1. Leaders Have Initiative Conversations
2. Choose Your Initiative Statement: What-When-Why
3. Prepare for Your Initiative Conversation: Who-Where-How
4. Launch Your Initiative Conversation
5. If You Are Missing Initiative Conversations
6. Putting it into Practice
Chapter 3 – Understanding Conversations: Include & Engage
1. Help People Find a Positive Meaning in Your Message
2. Expand and Deepen Participation
3. The Limits of Understanding
4. If You Are Missing Understanding Conversations
5. Putting it into Practice
Chapter 4 – Performance Conversations: Ask and Promise
1. Commit to Performance: What-When-Why
2. Ask Others to Commit
3. Promises Create Agreements: Who-Where-How
4. Manage the Agreement
5. If You Are Missing Performance Conversations
6. Putting it into Practice
Chapter 5 – Closure Conversations: Create Endings
1. An Incomplete Past Can Prevent a New Future
2. The Four A’s of Closure Conversations
3. Build Accountability and Resolve “People Problems”
4. If You Are Missing Closure Conversations
5. Putting it into Practice
Chapter 6 – Using the Four Conversations
1. Using the Four Conversations
2. How the Four Conversations Work Together
3. Putting it into Practice
Chapter 7 – Support the Conversational Workplace
1. The Conversational Workplace
2. Practices to Support for the Conversational Workplace
3. Implementing the Practices: Four Tips
4. A Closing Note
Resources
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Authors

About the Author

Jeffrey Ford is associate professor of management in the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University in Columbus.
Laurie Ford is a consultant to managers and executives in business, government agencies, and associations on organization redesign and change implementation.

Reviews

“Conversation is the simplest, oldest, and most effective way for people to communicate. Yet too many people find conversations intimidating. Here are well-tested conversational practices that offer real support for leaders to discover the extraordinary benefits of communicating well.”
—Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science and Turning to One Another

“A seminal work that shows leaders how to move from unproductive chatter to conversations that make things happen.”
—Dave Logan, Professor at Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, cofounder and senior partner of CultureSync, and author of Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance

“The Four Conversations takes the old ideas of workplace communication to an entirely new level of effectiveness and ease."
--Jack Stack, President and CEO, SRC Holdings Corporation, and author of The Great Game of Business