ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a story that illustrates how to move from Level I to Level III through co-creating conversational rituals. It introduces the Conversational Dashboard as a visual tool so teams can assess their levels of engagement, and when they do, they have a way of co-regulating the engagement to meet the needs of the situation. Masters of Conversational Intelligence are able to recognize when they are on the same page with others and when they are not, and they can refocus, reframe, and redirect the conversation in ways that open the space for more discovery and dialogue. Conversation rituals are the heart of any transformational process. In fact, engaging conversational rituals are the catalyst that activates change without resistance and fear. The biggest shift at Clairol was the move from “telling—asking” as the primary conversational dynamic to a “sharing—discovering” style of interaction.
