The ability to engage in constructive, learning-focused dialogue about difficult subjects, in challenging circumstances, hierarchy, personalities, locations and across tough boundaries.

It’s a vital competence for both personal and collective performance.

PERSONAL PERFORMANCE: A person with high conversational capacity makes every conversation or meeting smarter because they’re in the room. A person with low conversational capacity – even if they have high intelligence and good intentions – often has the opposite effect.

COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE: A team with high conversational capacity can perform well, remaining on track even when dealing with their most troublesome issues. The performance of a team with low capacity, by contrast, can be derailed by a trivial disagreement. In this sense, conversational capacity isn’t just another aspect of effective teamwork – it defines it. A team that can’t communicate about its most pressing issues isn’t really a team at all. It’s just a group of people who can’t engage with each other effectively when it counts.