Talk Sense: Communicating to Lead and Learn (2005) is about communicating for a new reason, from a new mindset, with a new set of skills, to respond to the new imperative for continuously improving performance. Clearly, then, the book cannot be about communication in the old sense of the word – to inform, persuade, and direct. It is about communicating to learn and change our own and others’ thinking and behavior through interaction. It is about how to grow into a leader who leads as a learner, a learner whose skillfulness produces improved performance in others, not as a result of coercion and fear but because of insight, changed assumptions, and personal commitment to improve. From the perspectives of their roles as parents, partners, and bosses, the writers of the stories in this book, who are owners, CEOs, general managers, and supervisors, reveal their struggles to make their own minds the object of inquiry and enlarge them by discovering, questioning, and changing their assumptions. Then, they show in dialogue exchanges their subsequent efforts to translate their new assumptions into new behavior with their children, partners, and colleagues. Their extended dialogue stories contrast their initial mishandling of difficult interactions with their subsequent skillful performance. It is that competence that produces trust, change, commitment, and improved performance in others.