It is true that avoiding difficult conversations within relationships, teams and organizations contributes to longer-term challenges and even dysfunction. Not having conversations does not make the need for them go away. It simply drives the issues underground where they will become a disruptive influence in their own time, often sparked by someone’s response to tension, conflict or worldview clashes.

How does Worldview Intelligence help us engage, rather than avoid, those difficult conversations?

1. Worldview Intelligence provides the understanding that we all have worldviews, which are the lenses through which we see and experience the world. They are different for each of us, working largely in our unawareness and influencing relationships, communication and tension or conflict. Just this awareness can activate curiosity and a desire for understanding when considering sources of tension that can get in the way of engaging a conversation.
2. The Worldview Intelligence Six Dimensions Framework – Reality, History, Future, Values, Practices and Knowledge – provides a coherent, interdependent structure to offer insight into your own worldview and that of others, including individuals, teams, communities or organizations. This means you can find connecting points more readily and look for and explore differences and this can change the nature of the conversation.
3. Our 5-point SHEER Planning Template enables individuals and teams to think through a challenging conversation and plan for better ways to engage it. It asks people to reflect on:
   • * Their own Starting Point, or what they may be contributing to the tension or conflict,
   • * Hopes and outcomes for the conversation
   • * How to bring Empathy for others involved and their perspectives
   • * Better ways to Engage both the person (or people) and the conversations, and
   • * The Results through Reflecting on what happened, what went well and what could go better in the future.

Some conversations are definitely more challenging than others. The longer they go unaddressed, the harder it is to engage them in meaningful and thoughtful ways. Worldview Intelligence offers a different language and approach that enables you to be strategic and purposeful in transforming conversations, relationships and even workplace cultures. It will also help you discern the difference between a conversation that can be completed in one sitting and one that needs to be held or hosted consistently over a longer-term process.

Check out our short e-learning course, Conflict Avoidance to Productive Outcomes or reach out to Jerry or Kathy for coaching or consulting support.