Book review: “Now we’re talking” by Sarah Rozenthuler

January 2, 2025|Kim's Blog, Management Skills, Relationship Management|

I’ve reviewed several books on business conversation skills (see list below) and this 2024 book, subtitled “How to discuss what really matters”, is one of the best so far. It’s aimed at senior people for leadership development – especially during change management. However, HR professionals, coaches, facilitators and even therapists will also find it useful. It tackles topics such as difficult conversations, team meetings, conflict and negotiation. Book review: Now we’re talking by Sarah Rozenthuler.

About the author

Author Sarah Rozenthuler is a leadership consultant, dialogue coach and Chartered Psychologist. She’s on the faculty of Advanced Management and Leadership Programme at Said Business School. She also wrote “How to have meaningful conversations” and “Powered by purpose”. She draws on her executive coaching conversations to illustrate key points throughout the book.

Home – Sarah Rozenthuler “Energising Leaders to do Great Work”

What I liked about “Now we’re talking”

The 230-page book promises to deliver confidence, competence and courage. Rozenthuler sees conversation as a vital leadership skill that assists in creating culture, collaboration, creativity and change.

The book has solid theoretical foundations, is bang up to date and evidence-based. Each page is studded with interesting insights, helpful frameworks and practical tips to promote action.

A recurring theme is leading change through dialogue. And it provides a tool box for leaders to have more productive conversations and meetings in doing so.

Ideas are illustrated with stories and case studies of directors, managers and employees in a variety of organisations covering finance, retail, media, education, government, energy and health sectors. Each chapter ends with a concise summary and “If you do only one thing now” thus supporting real behaviour change.

Maybe because I am a psychologist like the author, I really enjoyed reading this book. Her psychology background shines through. For example, she mentions the Humanistic principles of empathy, congruence and universal positive regard (see A general law of interpersonal relationships?). She talks of the therapeutic concept of creating a “holding environment” or “container” (where the person feels accepted no matter what they share).

Conversations lead change

The author sees the creation of a culture of coaching in organisation being closely related to building a culture of dialogue (“a place where creative conversations rather than reactive interactions happen”). She explains the three qualities that differentiate dialogue from discussion – Reflective (slower), Generative (feeling more lucid) and Dynamic (a sense of flow).

Four themes for leadership

Four themes converge at the foundation of authentic leadership and effective dialogue:

Self-awareness
Interpersonal transparency
Tolerance for uncertainty and difference
Strong ethical compass

She explores obstacles to conversations including: lack of time, “difficult” people, assumption of inertia (“nothing will change”), too tricky, reluctance to tackle poor performance and the desire not to “rock the boat”.

Better self-awareness and self-management

There’s an interesting section on turning down the heat (emotional regulation) – how to manage your reactivity and know your triggers – whether you attack, withdraw or acquiesce (like the fight, flight, freeze or fawn response to a threat). The author advises: create a pause, be objective and take stock. She mentions David Rock’s SCARF model leadership conversation skills: SCARF model of neuroscience

There’s consideration of the Inner Game’s idea of two selves – reactive (judging, inner critic and “efforting”) and creative (spontaneous and calm). This is supplemented with information from psychoanalyst Karen Horney who argued children develop three defensive reactions in response to the threatening world of adults – to move towards people (appeaser), away from people (avoider) or against people (confronter). There’s guidance on these different styles in difficult conversations.

This leads to an exploration of core beliefs – and there is an online assessment to help you determine your approach (a Leadership Circle analysis measuring reactive-creative and task-relationship tendencies against dimensions: self-awareness, authenticity, systems awareness, achieving, controlling, protecting, complying, relating).

The author mentions Deloitte and PwC giving extra coaching to their youngest UK staff after noticing recruits whose education was disrupted by lockdowns and have weaker teamwork and communication skills than previous cohorts.

The Four Secrets

These require you to develop your self-awareness and systemic awareness and the author provides helpful guidance.

Find your ground
- Cultivate a steady place inside by managing your inner dialogue and inner critic (there’s exploration of the superego). And how to overcome Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and how to overcome them with Performance Enhancing Thoughts (PETs)
- Discern what’s true for you and stay present
- There’s an interesting exercise to compare what you were thinking and feeling but not saying during an interaction and helpful guidance on preparing for a difficult conversation

Build a bridge
- Generate trust by listening deeply – with prompts for mirroring, validating and empathising
- It was good to see my friend Simon Horton’s book “Change their mind” mentioned and his summary “I listened them into it”
- I enjoyed reading about therapist Harville Hendrix’s concept of Imago (a fusion of the key characteristics of our primary caretakers “when we fall in love, it’s because that person ‘fit’ the template of our Imago” in order to complete our unfinished business from childhood).
- I liked the idea of agreeing roles for speaker and listener – and turn taking “Sharing what you see from your unique vantage point is known as the practice of “voicing””.
- Speak authentically – Use collaborative language (free of judgement, replace you statements with I statements, avoid statements that contain should or shouldn’t, eliminate always and never)
- Express yourself – share your observations, honestly speak your feelings, speak about the impact, ask questions that open up the conversation to surface unmet needs

Read the room
- Notice what’s going on as people speak in small groups and teams – learn to dual process
- Use David Kantor’s Four-Player model (Moves, Follow, Oppose, Bystand) to disrupt without being disrespectful and make meetings more productive
- Manage Groupthink, pressure to conform and in-group/out-group dynamics
- Bring in the “missing vitamins” to enrich the conversation

Hold space
- Create an expansive emotional space where stakeholders can honour their differences, navigate conflict, speak candidly and allow new possibilities to emerge
- Organise a “check in” at the start of meetings (there are some great check in questions provided)
- Establish a climate by setting ground rules for inquiry, inclusion, spontaneity, possibility and freedom. Groups that are more likely to perform well are the ones where conversational turn-taking takes place
- Recognise the five dysfunctions of a team (Lencioni – absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results)
- Sense the four fields of conversation: Politeness, Breakdown, Inquiry and Flow (Scharmer)

Lead change through dialogue

Leaders need to be skilled in building a culture of dialogue. The principles of dialogic process are potential, participation, coherence and awareness.

The critical conversations grid plots out level of difficulty against impact on performance to produce quadrants of JDI (Just Do It), Quick Wins, Big Wins and “Pains in the neck”. The Rittell/Webber typology of tame and wicked problems is also reviewed.

The standout comment of the book is this: “Change through dialogue is an iterative process of exploring an essential question together. It takes time to build a shared understanding, but the investment pays dividends. People are bought into change by being part of the co-creation”. I’ve long promoted the idea of communication to create buy-in and this statement encapsulates this. And the author’s exploration of “competing commitment” explains why there is often a perceived resistance to change.

“According to Dr Victoria Hurth, vision is what an organisation is trying to achieve, mission is how an organisation goes about it and purpose is an organisation’s enduring and meaningful reason to exist.”

There’s research on the importance of purpose. With organisations being classified as prioritisers, developers or laggards. The author suggests that ambition, alignment and aliveness are explored in dialogue. And mentions the five dimensions of a compelling purpose statement (MAGIC – Meaningful, Authentic, Generative, Implementable, Collaborative).

Favourite quotes from “Now we’re talking”

“Conversation has become one of the most-read topics in the Research Digest of the British Psychological Society, which has run for over 20 years”

“Our bias is clear – there is no organizational transformation without a preceding transformation in the consciousness of the leadership” Bob Anderson

“In the new economy, conversations are the most important form of work” Alan Webber

“A real conversation builds a shared understanding and leaves people feeling more lucid than before they started talking”

“It also helps when we bring in our curiosity more than our convictions. An open, unmade-up mind asks: “What am I missing here?”

“The rise of social media has made us poorer at having difficult conversations rather than increasing the richness of them”

“Most managers receive no training in how to talk and, more importantly, listen”

“All great failures in life stem from failures in conversation” Bill Isaacs

“Social fitness is the term used to describe how we can improve our lives through strengthening our social connections” Marc Shulz

“I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again” Margaret Wheatley

“The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create and environment in which great ideas can happen” Simon Sinek

“The sinkhole of change is communication and motivation. It’s where change projects go to die” Nancy Rothbard

“Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you’re doing“ Alain de Botton

Surprising Statistics in “Now we’re talking”

Data from Gallup in 2023 found that one in five UK professional feel angry at work (19%, a rise of 4 percentage points)

Leaders who combine a rational with an emotional approach to making transformational changes can increase their likelihood to success by two and a half times, from 28% to 78%

Future Foundation research found that managers in the US spend an average of 34 days per year dealing with poor performance. This figure rises to 41 days per year in larger organisations

Research by workplace resource company Bravely found that 70% of managers avoid having difficult conversations

According to Chartered Management Institute, 80% of managers are “accidental” managers – without formal training

The Right Conversation has shown that a 15 per cent increase in conversational effectiveness translates into a 17 per cent improvement in the bottom line

Research from the US shows that over two-thirds of meetings (71%) are unproductive

Research by McKinsey found that around seven out of ten employees say that their purpose is defined by their work; and executives are nearly three times more likely than others to say that they rely on work for purpose. Nine out of ten say they want purpose in their lives.

“Now we’re talking” book contents

The foundations

Why dialogue matters
What stops us from talking
What every conversation needs

The four secrets

Find your ground
Build a bridge
Read the room
Hold space

Dialogic leadership in action

Lead change through dialogue
Conversations about purpose

Related books on conversation skills

You’re not listening – What you’re missing June 2024

How to start conversations that get results (Book review 4) September 2023 (“The First Minute” by Chris Fenning)

Conversation skills book review 3: Conversational intelligence May 2023 “Conversational intelligence – How great leaders build trust and get extraordinary results” by Judith E Glaser

Conversation skills book review 2 – How to talk to anyone: 92 little tricks (kimtasso.com) May 2023 “How to talk to anyone: 92 little tricks for big success” by Leil Lowndes (1999, 2017)

Conversation skills book review (Book review 1) May 2023 “How to talk to anyone about anything” by James W. Williams (2021)

Book review: Unleash the power of storytelling by Rob Biesenbach November 2024

The patterns of NLP applied to business interactions by Daryll Scott December 2023

Book review: Influential Internal Communication by Jenni Field (kimtasso.com) September 2022

Book review – Great networking by Alisa Grafton (kimtasso.com) July 2022

Book review: Digital Body Language – How to build trust by Erica Dhawan June 2021

Book review – Persuasion: The art of influencing people by James Borg March 2021

Reinforcements: How to get people to help you by Heidi Grant (kimtasso.com) October 2018

Better Business Relationships – book by Kim Tasso July 2018