We cannot manage what we cannot express, and how we express it makes all the difference. Have you been in situations where either we go round and round and round, but nothing gets decided? Or where we decide on something, but in your heart you know it's a shoddy decision that will be revisited? What about those two battle axes that get stuck in and hold the rest of us back from moving forward as well?

The key lies in noticing the patterns in conversations. There are only four speech acts, and everything that happens in a conversation is the result of which of those four gets used, which ones we prefer, which ones we don't use and how they follow one another. The ability to decode conversations in this manner gives facilitators and leaders a powerful toolbox to intervene, and more importantly to change behaviour.