Clip 16: Verbalising your thoughts

Michael:

The approach that we take is that if we are seriously expecting to work with people, then we are wanting to construct what it is that we do with them, with them. And that we can only do that really effectively if they have as much information as we do about what we are assuming about that work, about the purpose of that work, about how it might proceed, about what the long term outcomes are – in effect, so that they need to be able to see all of our reasoning, all of our feeling about it, the extent to which it’s important to us. They need to know the extent to which we take ourselves seriously.

If we are able to put that out there in an appropriate way, then they’re in a much better position to judge the merits and the worth of what we are wanting to do. They’re also more likely to put their own thinking on the table, because they can see that we’re being open about ours. That means that that increases the chances that both of us are going to see all the information that guides our individual decision making about the extent that we are going to be committed to working together. That increases the chances that when we do reach agreement, that it’s going to be a strong agreement that we are both committed to.