Management teams would do well to learn methods for voting to select or rank-order alternatives that are more sophisticated than a simple show of hands.

There are three types of talk—cumulative talk, disputational talk, and exploratory talk. Exploratory talk makes the most of the group members’ knowledge. There are eight practices you can use to promote exploratory talk.

Thinking together is the ultimate core competency. Two things your team can do to do a better job of thinking together are to employ conversation mapping tools and to master the practice of inquiry.

Conversation mapping enables you to keep track of the topics, issues, positions, and reasons that progressively unfold during a conversation. While any diagramming tool will do, Compendium is a software tool specifically designed to map the elements of a dialogue.