Talk, Inc.

CHAPTER ONE

Up and Down

The Promise of Trust-Based Leadership

DISTANCE IS A DISEASE that cripples true conversation. Frequently, the distance that exists between conversational participants is spatial: Good talk rarely occurs when people have to yell at each other. Yet physical proximity, while it’s often a vital ingredient in the success of a conversation, isn’t essential. The telephone can mediate an emotionally charged dialogue or a heartfelt meeting of minds, if people choose to use it that way, and the same point applies to instant messaging and phone-based texting. What is essential to the conduct of interpersonal conversation is mental or emotional proximity. Our term for that quality is conversational intimacy.

Organizational conversation, ...