Part 3: Accepting—Creating a Safe Haven for Risk Taking
Chapter 10: Invitations to Risk: Acceptance as a Nurturer of Courage. The process of moving from novice to mastery is clear. The protégé must embrace the risk of making errors and even ending in failure. To take such a risk, particularly in the presence of another, requires courage. And it is thus a key task of a mentor to communicate the kind of acceptance that will create a safe environment in which the protégé can experiment.
Chapter 11: Socrates’ Great Secret: Awesome Queries focuses on the power of asking questions that foster a protégé’s feeling of acceptance. Fair-weather questions at a family reunion, for instance, leave you with a very different feeling than do the questions that demonstrate sincere curiosity. Everyone knows how to ask questions, but good mentoring uses inquiry as a tool to enrich the relationship while facilitating insight and discovery. Mastering the techniques in this chapter can benefit all interpersonal relationships.
Chapter 12: The Ear of an Ally: The Lost Art of Listening focuses on the importance and power of cultivating acceptance through listening. The initial temptation may be to skip this chapter, saying to yourself, “I know how to listen!” Try to resist. Readers of previous editions indicated that this chapter may be the most powerful one in the book because it offers a much deeper and richer definition of listening than generally discussed in how-to communication books.
Chapter 13: “Give-and-Take” Starts with “Give”: Distinguished Dialogues is not a chapter about questions and answers. Rather, it offers interpersonal tools on how to make a discussion more of an insightful (full of insight) conversation. This chapter takes Socrates’ secret (chapter 11) to an advanced level of application, complete with techniques for restarting a stalled or sidetracked discussion or stopping a discussion that has become unproductive.
Chapter 14: Case Study: Simply Listen. This is an interview with Deanna Mulligan, CEO of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America is a Fortune 300 company founded in 1860 and the fourth-largest mutual life insurance company in the United States. Prior to joining Guardian in 2008, Ms. Mulligan was founding partner of DMM Management Solutions, LLC, a life insurance consultancy. She was a principal at McKinsey and Company, where she additionally served as co-leader of the North American Life Insurance Practice. Ms. Mulligan holds an MBA from Stanford University. She was listed by Fortune as one of the 50 most powerful women in U.S. business.