Talk Action: How Successful Teams Align Conversations with Action

Have you walked away from a meeting thinking-So what do you want me to do exactly? Have you been in a conflict and felt-But that's not what I meant! Many feel a disconnect between talk and action. However, no action has ever happened outside a powerful conversation. Talk Action provides the conversational framework to create productive, meaningful engagement in teams. This book will help you burst the myths around all talk and no action, find your 'talk comfort zone' looking into the talk kaleidoscope, rewire your talk to end in action and use the five-part framework to resolve conflicts, influence career growth and build high-performing teams. "

Table of Contents:
Foreword by N. Jayasankaran Acknowledgements Introduction PART I How Talk Becomes Action What Makes Great Teams Great? The Role of Conversation The Talk Kaleidoscope Navigate from Talk to Action PART II Vital: The Talk–Action Framework Visualize Invite Context Transform to a Conversation Chrysalis Action Design Learning in Reflection PART III Talk in Action: Four Conversations for Successful Teams The Four Conversations for a Team’s Success Connected Conversations Influence Conversations Career Conversations Difficult Conversations E-Talk: Adapting the Four Conversations in Virtual Teams

About the Author :
Dr Latha Vijaybaskar, an ICF-certified coach, facilitator and author, catalyses individuals and teams to navigate the conversation side of business. VITAL Conversations is a result of 10 years of research on conversations as the cornerstone to action. Working with Latha, people learn to build trust, hold difficult conversations, manage conflict, guarantee psychological safety in their interaction and achieve gargantuan performance through collaborative efforts in life and business. Latha brings along almost 18 years of experience in training and teaching, working across corporate, education and social sectors. She has coached, trained and taught over 2,000 millennial leaders in real estate, IT, financial sector, retail and academia. In colleges, Latha handles subjects related to organizational behaviour, leadership and business communication. Her approach is based on exhaustive research in positive psychology, organizational communication, appreciative inquiry and coaching conversations. Her accumulated credentials include the ICF-accredited ACC, PhD in management with her thesis on positive organizational communication, MBA, masters in psychology and MPhil in organizational communication. Her first two books, 21 Difficult Conversations: Tools to Navigate Your Most Important Talk and Master Exactly What to Say and Masterstrokes: Reinventing Leadership in Uncertain Times, are both Amazon bestsellers. To connect, influence and lead inside the transforming space of a conversation, reach out to Latha at www.drlathavijaybaskar.com.

Review :
If you’re tired of your meetings and conversations ending with no more progress than when you started, then you need Talk Action! Latha’s research and insights will help you rewire your conversations to end in actionable items and create meaningful connections with each interaction. A must-read! We create our worlds through our conversations. After a long time, I had heard about a book that made me smile. Latha’s book shows how to frame conversations, so people engage and act. You will never look at your team interactions quite the same way. This book uniquely positions the talk–action spectrum to highlight the enigmatic power of conversations in a team context. As a person interested in team dynamics research, this book has given me insights on how well intended, positive and authentic conversations could drive team engagement, team trust and team performance. The research-based VITAL framework is sequentially well constructed and is easy to understand and implement. Interestingly, the book also extends the lens to the virtual team context which is today’s reality. As organizations are increasingly relying on teams to solve their complex issues, this book comes in handy. The self-help tips and tools will make practitioners grab the book to take steps and make their teams engaged and effective. We often get stuck in our interactions, unable to move from problem to potential, from idea to implementation. This is where tools such as the ‘talk kaleidoscope’ and ‘career dashboard’ from Latha’s book help managers and leaders to navigate conversations and inspire action. I am a strong believer of the fact that conversations play a very significant role in a team. The VITAL framework given in the book is a great way to navigate a conversation to action. As an executive coach and author, I highly recommend you to grab a copy of this compelling book with its compendium of tools, story studies and methods to apply the framework in the important team conversations. ‘Conversations create transformation’ is the deep message that Latha is giving us in this book with relatable stories and structures. The book has been closely researched and penned, and it outlines the basis of engagement often confronting people managers in companies—the ‘tough conversation’ and the role of communication in team dynamics. The VITAL conversation framework gives a good workable mechanism to make good teams work towards becoming great teams. The positive organizational environment, a critical driver for business results in the current volatile business environment, is enumerated through case studies and analysis. This is a recommended read for the current and future people managers and business leaders. Latha uses her depth of academic knowledge, coaching experience, facilitation, case studies, industry research and, most importantly, an empathetical disposition to offer a way out for a challenge that the industry has grappled with consistently over time—why great teams perform. For example, it is fascinating to see how she weaves Simon Sinek, William Isaacs, Harvard Business Review and J. L. Austin into her narrative to prove one of her points. For those of you who prefer the practical route, her framework provides the means to effectively bridge talk and action! The work of leadership is done through powerful conversations—dialogues that illuminate, engage, provoke and empower people. In Talk Action, Dr Latha Vijaybaskar draws on years of research to provide insights and tools that enable conversations that align to engagement and action by creating a safe space and allowing for all voices to be heard. This leads to purposeful and productive teams and organizations.