The Conversation Factory

Each of us has a conversational range. What size of conversation brings you alive? In this little audio experiment, I read aloud an essay of mine about Conversational Range. I hope you enjoy it! Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider Link to original article: https://www.danielstillman.com/blog/conversational-range

I'm so excited to share this book club experiment with you. I've been inviting alums of my facilitation masterclass and subscribers to the conversation factory insiders group into intimate conversations with authors of transformative books. In this conversation, my friend Brian Pagán, Author of "The Creative Empathy Field Guide," is our guest. Brian points out early on that empathy is lauded by many thought leaders and no lack of articles - with the simple, inspirational message that empathy is good for you! And while that is absolutely true, what is missing is the how of empathy - not the why. Brain sought to fill this gap with his book, "the creative empathy field guide" which is a very short and very helpful book....and if you follow the links to Brian's website at the Greatness Studio, he's got a "greatest hits" selection from the book that you can access, free of charge. So: Just to clarify our definitions: Creative Empathy is the use of empathy in the creative process. That is, we are making things and those things are not for us. So, we must learn to both connect with those people we are creating for and to detach from them - we have to tap into our skills of emotional agility to lean in and out of creative empathy. One thing that you'll find most surprising (or at least I did!) is that creative empathy benefits from some of the tools of method acting - the ability to connect to your own experience and bring that experience into the present moment. One thing that is missing from this conversation is my friend and guest from early in 2021, Dr. Lesely Ann Noel, who really helped me understand that there are limits to us-them dichotomies in design thinking and that designing for others can reinforce existing power dynamics, stereotypes and "othering" of people. Brian does address this in his book, but I recommend my conversation with Dr. Noel, DeColonizing Design Thinking. Dr. Noel has a complementary array of tools to help decolonize our thinking, like her Positionality Wheel which we turned into a Mural template to help you facilitate that conversation with your teams. In this conversation, Brian and the Conversation Factory Insiders Community dives deep into The Empathic Design Process that Brian adapted: 1. Discovery, 2. Immersion, 3. Connection, 4. Detachment Discovery: As creators, we approach the other person's world, which provokes our interest, curiosity, and willingness to empathize. Immersion: We enter the other person's world, look around, and absorb what we see without judgment. Connection: Here, we resonate with the other person's experience by recalling our own relevant experiences and memories. Detachment: Finally, we leave their world to focus on creative action, before starting the cycle afresh. Also check out Brian's site for Free Creative Empathy Tools like an Ethical Design Checklist, his Journey Map Canvas and a Character Map Canvas (as an alternative to personas). Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain! I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions. Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 too!

What is a "perfect conversation"? What about the "perfect" conversationalist? I'm thrilled to share this discussion that Michael Bervell and I had around those questions and more. Michael is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and philosopher. He currently serves as the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and works as a Portfolio Development Manager at M12, Microsoft's Venture Capital Fund. He's also the author of Unlocking Unicorns and the host of the blog "billion dollar startup ideas" He's also a conversation design nerd, like me… and his insights into conversation design are not to be missed. We unpack some essential questions, like: Understanding the types of Conversations with the "Concentric Circle" model of Conversations The Importance of Self-Talk in Conversations The Art of Noticing: What to "read" when you're reading a conversation. Being an "authentic chameleon": Balancing being adaptable in conversation with being authentic The Power of non-questions and Questions with a period. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain! I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions. I sent the transcript to Rashmi so she could pull out what she needed from the conversation. Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 too! Links Unlocking Unicorns, by Michael Bervell Michael's website Billion Dollar Startup Ideas Michael on TikTok The TikTok Michael told Daniel to make

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I've been running for a few months now. I'm experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast. This is a round-table conversation with Adam Kahane, author of Facilitating Breakthrough, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven't listened to the interview I did with Adam last season OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation. Adam does show some slides during the conversation, so head over to YouTube if you want to follow along. A note on process: In this session, you'll hear the panel share what parts of the book were most impactful to them, and then Adam responds to their comments with some deeper thoughts. The wisdom Adam drops here is absolutely worth the price of admission! Check out the show notes on theconversationfactory.com for links to Adam's book, our podcast conversation last year, and his work as a Director at Reos Partners. If you're unfamiliar with Adam and Reos, Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country's transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid. He's gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between. Adam is amazingly honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy, Transformative Scenario Planning, and Solving Tough Problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt...or just get Facilitating Breakthrough! It's all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it's an eye-opener. As you'll hear, many of the panel members had an eye-opening moment, as I did, around the idea of Vertical and Horizontal facilitation. Vertical and Horizontal Facilitation In the opening quote, Adam points out that Vertical and Horizontal facilitation are two poles of a polarity. And like all good polarities, the key is to hold them lightly and dance between them mindfully. Vertical Facilitation is focused on singularity: We have the right answer, and a right answer can be found and advocated for. Horizontal Facilitation is focused on multiplicity: We each have our own answer, our own view, and there is no right path. As Adam says...the "bad guy" isn't one or the other pole of the polarity...it's choosing one over the other. I also deeply loved that Adam makes clear that the work of the Facilitator mirrors the work of the group. Adam points out (on p.70 of his book) that: A facilitator can only help participants if they, like participants, move back and forth between bringing their experience and also listening and adjusting to the needs of the situation Again: it's not about choosing verticality (finding a single answer) or horizontality (exploring multiplicity)...it's about the opening and emergence created when we shift from one side of the polarity to the other. Can we move between Inquiring (the move to the horizontal) and Advocating (which shifts to the vertical)? Complex situations rarely have solutions that can readily and easily be identified and advocated for. So, finding a path through truly complex challenges requires careful and artful shifting between these two modes of Vertical and Horizontal. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and that you check out Adam's recent book, Facilitating Breakthrough. If you want to take a deep dive into mastering facilitation and leading conversations through complexity, check out my Facilitation Masterclass. The next 12-week cohort starts in February. Learn more here. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain! Go to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 too! Links Facilitat

Recently, I've been reading a book called "Ethic of Excellence" by Ron Berger. He teaches teachers about how to invoke pride in students, to invite them to work through community engagement and thoughtful feedback, and multiple drafts of work. Check out his classic short video called "Austin's Butterfly" here. He asserts that thoughtful feedback (ie critique) is essential to making great work, which he also asserts is the whole point of life: Make great things. He boils a philosophy of critique down to three principles: Be Kind Be Specific Be Helpful I wanted to bring together three of my favorite leaders to have a roundtable conversation about leading a culture of critique, and to open up about how to bring these ways of working together to life at work. Aaron Irizarry has been on this podcast before, with his co-author of "Discussing Design" Adam Connor. He's the Senior Director of Servicing Platforms Design at Capital One and is a deep, deep thinker on this subject. Aniruddha Kadam recently left LinkedIn, where he was a Senior Design Manager. He's also an Advisor at Rethink HQ, which recently released an excellent guide to leading critique. One of my favorite points in that guide is: Make it clear what you are NOT asking for feedback on! And the roundtable is rounded out by the amazing and delightful Christen Penny, who is a Design Educator & Community Builder and leads the Design Education team at Workday, an enterprise cloud application for finance, HR, and planning. I wanted to open with Christen's quote about culture change being challenging, because it's critical to have empathy for ourselves and others as we try to facilitate and lead change. Creating rituals around critique takes time. Getting people to lean into the discomfort takes effort. Building psychological safety doesn't come for free. We should remind ourselves that we're asking people to lean into discomfort - to run into the fire. Ron Berger's perspective is ultimately the goal: We want our work and our organization's work to be excellent. And we need outside feedback to make that possible. Critique before a launch is a lot less painful than realizing a missed opportunity after we hit "send". There is so much goodness in this conversation! I hope you take the time to absorb it all. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain! I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions. I sent the transcript to Rashmi so she could pull out what she needed from the conversation. Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 too! Links and Questions: Aaron Irizarry, Sr. Director, Servicing Platforms Design at Capital One is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaroni/ Adam Connor & Adam Irizarry on a way-back episode: Designing a Culture of Critique Aniruddha Kadam, Advisor at Rethink HQ, formerly Design at LinkedIn is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniruddhakadam/ Rethink HQ Critique guide: https://www.rethinkhq.com/design-critique/leading-effective-design-critiques Christen Penny, Design Educator @Workday is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christenpenny/ Some questions that guided our conversation: Why is Critique important? Why is a culture of Critique important? What are the barriers to cultivating a culture of critique? What are best practices on the individual, team and org levels to invite more critique?

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I've been running for a few months now. I'm experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast. This is a round-table conversation with Fred Dust, author of Making Conversation, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven't listened to the interview I did with Fred OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain! I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions. Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 too! Links: Making Conversation by Fred Dust Debt, the First 5000 Years by David Graeber Otto Scharmer's Presencing Institute

I'm really excited to share my conversation with Kat Vellos, an amazing designer of experiences. Today we talk about the art of intentionality and the power of hearing yourself say something you've never said before. We also dive deep into some of the amazing insights in her book, "We Should Get Together: The secret to cultivating better friendships" One of the things that I loved from the book was Kat's powerful metaphor about "hydroponic friendship," and how you can create a supercharged connection through intentional vulnerability and shared experiences. She draws on her long-time experience as a facilitator and designer to create what for me was one of the big "Aha!" moments: hydroponic friendship requires a container, and that's one of the things that leaders can do to design experiences: They can create the container. A container can be the question that starts the conversation, the invitation to the party. In Improv, it's called the "Magic Circle" - the place where new rules and ways of being apply, the "game world". While Kat's book is about designing friendship in our lives, she points out that connection in one part of our lives leads to connection in all parts of our lives. We're experiencing loneliness and disconnection not only in our everyday lives but at work ...and work is where we spend a lot of time. Kat and I unpack four powerful facets of leadership: One: the ability to design experiences - the ability to bring people together to have a shared, transformative conversation. Two: the ability to be flexible on outcomes while still being aligned on a larger goal. This is one of the most powerful Design Thinking mental models: focusing on needs instead of solutions. Three: We also explore an absolutely fundamental capacity of leadership - the ability to listen and connect with people, deeply. Four: Kat also points out that actually doing something with what you've heard is the last, most crucial component of leading and caring for a team. I'm thrilled to have connected with Kat, and excited to share her work with you. I highly recommend reading her book "We Should Get Together" and its addendum, "Connected from Afar," which is filled with ways to create more intentional connection in your life and your work - it was written during the height of the pandemic, so the tools are all zoom-friendly. Also, make sure you check out the links below to some of her other projects, and to her amazing post on 40-plus alternatives to "How are you?" with different versions for work and everyday life. Enjoy the show! LINKS Kat's Alternatives to "How are you" Kat's Website We Should Get Together by Kat Vellos The problem with how are you: brightsiding! Inspiration Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W4XPK7G/ https://www.antionettecarroll.design/ https://www.creativereactionlab.com/

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I've been running for a few months now. I'm experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast. This is the first prototype, that I ran a few months back with two Alums of the Facilitation Masterclass, Meredith England and Jenn Hayslett. I won't say more about them - they introduce themselves at the *end* of the episode... I like the idea of them just being trusted friends to you, because they are trusted friends to me! If you haven't listened to the episode where I interview Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk, about how Indigenous thinking can (and will!) save the world, I think you can still enjoy this episode...even if you haven't read the book...although I think you should! As Tyson says in his book: "There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting." This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…This conversation is hopefully another positive step in that direction. This conversation is a Yarn, in the Aboriginal sense of the word. As Tyson taught me, Yarning is the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. It's the way that Aboriginal communities connect, learn and decide together. And actual Sand Talk is a part of Yarning. Sand Talk, the book, is grounded in a series of drawings, drawn, literally, on the ground, in the Sand. Sand Talk, in another, more literal interpretation, is visual thinking as a grounding for a conversation. This kind of talk is something that I think is missing in nearly every kind of meeting...saying, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what you are talking about right now." ...and looking at those pictures of the world, together. Most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings. That's my rant for now. I hope you enjoy this conversation. If you're interested in supporting the podcast and potentially joining us for one of these book club conversations, subscribe to the Conversation Factory insider! In September we're gathering to read and connect with past podcast guest Adam Kahane, to talk about his new book, Facilitating Breakthrough. It's going to be awesome. LINKS Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta Tyson Yunkaporta on The Conversation Factory

My guest is Jeanne Liedtka, Professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business and an absolute rockstar of Design Thinking. She's the author of (most recently) Experiencing Design and joins me this episode to talk about getting started with Design Thinking and some pitfalls that can happen along the way as you move yourself and your organization towards not just doing design thinking but experiencing it - the road to mastery, moving past the surface level with Design Thinking. Jeanne's latest book Experiencing Design is organized around a powerful framework that separates Doing vs. Experiencing vs. Becoming. This frame clarifies the transformational journey of an individual as they engage more deeply with Design Thinking. If you want to deepen and expand your understanding of Design Thinking past the Stanford Design School Hexagons, I highly recommend Jeanne's books. Her 2011 book, Designing for Growth, co-authored with Tim Ogilvy, was a crucial moment in my introduction to the power and breadth of Design Thinking. Jeanne and I have both had this experience with folks we've worked with, and maybe you have had it happen to you: you take a workshop and a lightbulb clicks on in your head... You find a new way of working that you see limitless potential in, that you want to implement and share with others. People say, "I wish my team, my organisation, could work this way. Where can I start?" And when you bring the tools and tips back to work, something falls flat…transforming how we work together is non-trivial. It's not just about the tools - the doing. It's about the mindsets - the experiencing and becoming. Jeanne and I talk about getting started with the tools of Design Thinking, some of the pitfalls that happen along the way, and how learning in action is a really fundamental and challenging shift both for the individual innovator and also for the organisation as a whole. Many people who I train in these new ways of working say their primary block is that others are not doing it too, that *everyone* isn't trained in these tools. And while I'd love to train the whole organization, it's not always possible, or even wise. My advice is usually, "Start really, really small, and do it in ways that no one can tell you no. Ask for forgiveness instead of permission." The ROI of DT Jeanne and I also talk about the real ROI on DT. Organizations focus on the visible ROI of Design Thinking - what we will see- first the outputs, the templates, the workshops, and then the innovation they hope for - moving the needle in the business. But the real transformational aspect of Design Thinking is the way people are changed by the activities - what they experience and what they become. (check out the show notes for images of Jeanne's Iceberg model of the ROI of DT) Design Thinking is, of course, doing activities like gathering data, identifying insights, establishing design criteria, generating ideas, prototyping, and experimenting...but each of them results in the individual person experiencing sense-making, alignment, and emergence - some of the real gold in Design Thinking. And all the while, they are becoming more empathetic and confident, collaborative, comfortable with co-creation and difference, able to bring ideas to life, resilient, and adaptive. This is the more deep, more durable transformation that is possible with Design Thinking...this is the real ROI of DT. MVC: Minimum Viable Competencies One of Jeanne's really profound contributions in the book is the idea of "minimum viable competencies": the things we can look for in the people that we are trying to transform and bring on board to this new way of working. Can they listen to understand? Can they separate facts from interpretations of the facts? Are they comfortable with ambiguity? Can they respect other viewpoints? Check out Jeanne's book for a comprehensive list of MVC and a survey to help you benchmark your organization's skills. Jeanne and I also dive into how Design Thinking catalyzes organizational change at the conversational level. For example, in the Emergence phase, she talks about thinking broadly about who you invite to the conversation, and she highlights requisite variety: the idea that the diversity of people in the conversation should match the complexity of the conversation, of the challenge we're hoping to solve. Refer back to my interview with Professor and Conversational Cybernetics expert Paul Pangaro for a deeper dive into requisite variety and how it applies to conversation dynamics. Also check out my interview with Jason Cyr, a Design Executive at Cisco, where he shares similar reflections on diversity and coalition building in driving a Design Thinking transformation. We also talked about how Design Thinking has a lot of tools, a lot of doings, that help with upfront discovery and testing, but when it comes to learning in action and alignment folks find it challenging to find turn-taking structures that help scaffold th

I am obsessed with culture, change and transformation…and always puzzling over how it really happens. One thing I know for sure: Forcing change, telling people to change, doesn't make it happen. I think there are two ways to profoundly facilitate change. One is: 💫 ASKING PEOPLE QUESTIONS THAT SHIFT THE CONVERSATION. When I talk about Conversational Leadership in my book, Good Talk, this is what I mean: We can transform how other people think, not by telling them how or what to think, but by framing and fostering a new conversation. The other way is by: 💥FACILITATING EXPERIENCES THAT FOSTER AN "AHA" MOMENT. This means, for me, asking a series of questions, and making space for conversations that bring people into a new mode of thinking - the other side of an "a-ha". This is why I love to say "an experience is worth a thousand slides" We can throw a thousand slides at a group and never see the shift we want to foster. Recently, my friend Jeff Gothelf did a lovely write up of an experience I led for one of his clients, one of my favorite exercises: The vase and flowers game. It's always thrilling to see one's impact through someone else's eyes. My reflections and his reflections are both linked here. Back in May I offered a free workshop to subscribers of to my Conversation Factory Insiders group walking through this exercise and a few others. I'd love to have you join that conversation...we meet every month to learn and grow together! If you'd like to join me August 17th, I'll be leading this workshop again, sharing my favorite exercises to help coach leaders to deep "aha!" moments about crucial mindsets at the heart of Agility, Design Thinking and Jobs-to-be-done. Check it out here, and pay what you can to attend. Use the code Pod20 to get 20% off the workshop. I'm so grateful Jeff came on the show to reflect on his journey, how key partnerships and relationships have been essential to his success, and to share some of the most powerful questions he asks leaders to shift their mindsets and thinking. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Imagine a world in which all leaders feel and display a deep regard for others' dignity. This is the world that Marilyn Gist, author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, is working hard to bring about. Mariyn is a Professor Emerita, Executive Programs and Center of Leadership Formation at Seattle University and also a member of the MG100 coaches...a group of the top 100 leaders in the world, convened by legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. Check out my interviews with other MG100 rockstars like Ayse Birsel, author of Design the Life you love, Dorie Clark, author of *several* books, including the upcoming "Long Game" and most recently, Alisa Cohn, the top startup coach in the world, and the author of the upcoming "From Startup to Grownup" Marilyn is working to redesign the conversation around leadership. Many folks, when they close their eyes and think "leader" , picture a light-skinned man in a dark suit, exuding alpha energy. Just do a google image search to check in with this out-moded vision of leadership. Leaders lead. They take charge and show the way. But leaders also need to listen, learn and understand the people they're meant to be leading. Marilyn has been teaching and coaching about leadership for decades and she wrote this book so that the world would stop overlooking what she calls "the one variable at the heart of leadership" Marilyn and I dig into what Leader Humility is, what it means to have it, practice it, and live it, and practical ways to incorporate it into your work and life. What's at stake? In human terms, Marilyn points out the Gallup poll that suggests that only 36% of Employees Are Engaged in the Workplace. While that's actually the highest it's been in 20 years, since they started measuring it, it's still really low. Gallup claims that about 14% percent of folks are actively disengaged (rather than just the 51% that is just regular-old disengaged). On your next zoom call, look around...it might be possible that only a third of the people on the grid really care. Again, in human terms, that 60-ish percent of folks is a drag on the small percentage of folks who really care. In financial terms, some estimate $500 billion in total losses in the US. In any one business, estimate 34% of the total salary roll. Yikes. If you ask the average worker in the US if their leader cares about their culture 31% of leaders don't think they have the culture they need to succeed. Their workers don't even think they care! 9%of workers say the leadership in their organizations are very committed to culture initiatives, and 58% of respondents say that their leadership either takes no action regarding culture or are merely reactive instead of being proactive. Marilyn suggests that workers want answers to three key questions from a leader: Who are you? (Not your name - who are you really as a person? What do you stand for?) Where are we going? (What is the bigger vision?) And do you see me? (Am I just a cog in the wheel or do you see me at all?) Also listen for a few of Marilyn's Six Keys to Leadership Humility: A balanced ego, Integrity A compelling vision Ethical strategies Generous inclusion A developmental focus. Listen on to the halfway point of our conversation to hear Marilyn tell a powerful story of generous inclusion and the generous question that Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft used to turn the lone dissenter on a team into a supporter of an initiative. While it would be easy and, as Marilyn points out, defensible, to go with the majority sentiment, using the skills of leadership humility can be more powerful and durable than conventional leadership. Support the Podcast and Get Insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider Marilyn's Website (you can find links to her book there!) Marilyn on Twitter Reinvention is Building a Conversation with Dorie ClarkDesigning the Life You Love with Ayse BirselThe Art of Coaching with Alisa Cohn

This episode is a little different than most…Today I do some live-coaching for Rashmi Sharma, a Global HR executive and TedX speaker, on shifting what she wants to be known for, evolving what she wants to offer to the world and how her work can heal for others, while she heals herself. I'm so grateful that Rashmi reached out to me for some coaching after we were both speaking at a virtual conference in Southeast Asia. As Rashmi has evolved as a leader, she wanted to do some deeper thinking about how she can evolve her thought leadership, and offer something to her community from a deeper place in herself. I really commend Rashmi's courage in sharing her process with so much vulnerability. As you'll hear in the conversation ahead, Rashmi and I talk about (although very indirectly) the ideas of sublimation - healing your own wounds through helping others. We also dive deep into how she can hold space and create more depth in her conversations, as she interviews her community to understand what wellness and wholeness really means to them. Make sure you check out the show notes for Rashmi's full notes reflecting on her insights from the coaching conversation, but, two that I want to highlight here are: Using all of yourself to Lead Joseph Campell famously said "it's the privilege of a lifetime to be as you are"... Finding and highlighting her phrase "use all of me to help people" was a golden nugget in the conversation. This is what Rashmi's interest and work on wholeness and wellbeing is really about - allowing our whole selves to be accessed in our lives. So, it makes sense that Rashmi wants to do the same for herself! Creating Depth in Conversations One powerful way to create more depth is to go there yourself...Rashmi and I talk about asking and listening from a deeper place in herself. We also highlight the idea that "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast," a motto from the Navy Seals. As she interviews her community to gain insights on her new area of focus, Rashmi realized that slowness and smoothness allows people to get comfortable and to think more deeply in her interviews. Slow and Smooth can mean slowing down your own voice, creating a little bit more space between your words, and it also means waiting a little bit between what they've said and your second question, your response. (Extra credit for not thinking about what you're going to say or ask next while they're talking!) Slowing yourself down can help others slow down and connect. Active listening helps me really hear, and also helps my partner hear themselves. Depth in a conversation can be hard at high velocity. One piece of advice I shared with Rashmi as she prepared to head into her next round of community interviews was to simply take a deep breath and ask her partner to tell a story. Narratives can pull a conversation from a back-and-forth of questions and answers. Narratives can help you more deeply enter into the world of the person you're talking to and hoping to get insights from. I love to work with leaders trying to define their thought leadership, leaders trying to scale their impact and leaders working to transform their organizations. I only work with a handful of high-performing folks each year. If you'd like to reach out about coaching, head over to DanielStillman.com/coaching Links from this episode: Rashmi on LinkedIn Rashmi's TedX talk Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Accesshttps://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

In this episode, Glenn Fajardo joins me for a conversation about virtual rituals and their power to help us make sense of the virtual waters we are swimming in everyday. Glenn co-leads the immersive course Design Across Borders at the Stanford d.school, and is the co-author of Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships. His thoughts on ritual and using curiosity as a force for connection in virtual collaboration are just some of the must-listen moments. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that's an affiliate link, so I'll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

What on earth would a podcast about designing human conversations, facilitation, leadership and organizational change have to learn from a coach and an expert on Food and Eating? Quite a lot, as it turns out! One of my favorite design thinking principles is to learn from "alternative worlds" - absorbing how other people and communities are solving similar problems in different contexts. My guest, Alissa Rumsey, is a registered dietitian, nutrition therapist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life. It's always interesting to learn from reflective practitioners - people willing to think about how they do what they do. Alissa designs many human conversations in her work and life, from her coaching work to her group programs to her book, and the marketing thereof - a book is a conversation, after all. Alissa's whole business is a series of conversations designed to shift the larger conversation about food and dieting. Food and eating can be fraught topics, but Alissa's approach of connecting with and learning to trust your own body is inclusive, empowering, encouraging and wise. She places dieting in a much larger (and longer) conversation about historical racism and gender dynamics. At the core of Alissa's work is an idea that is of deep interest to me: Interoception. Interoception Lately, I've been using this word in my coaching calls a lot, and it's Alissa's work that put it back at the top of my vocabulary. You might have heard the word proprioception: It's how you can touch your fingers and toes with your eyes closed: You know where your body is, physically. Proprioception is sometimes described as almost a sixth sense, the sense of self-movement and body position. It's essential for navigating the world in three dimensions, and survival. But if proprioception is a sixth sense, there's a seventh: Interoception: One's sense of one's internal state. When we say we feel fine, or feel sad, or angry or hungry, we're interpreting a multitude of internal sensations and summarizing them into a simple word. It's how we know what we need and start on the path of getting what we want in response to those needs. When we feel sad, what are we feeling that lets us know that we are feeling sad? Where is it in your body? Think about that...and feel that! When we're hungry, it can be physical hunger (like when I do a 16 hour fast...I know that I'm really hungry at the end!) or "mouth hunger" ...like how it just feels GOOD to eat ALL the popcorn. Or it can be emotional hunger that we soothe through eating. The challenge is that, unless we are attentive and aware of what's really going on with ourselves, we can't take care of ourselves, we can't give ourselves what we really want and need...and we can't grow. For example, for me, getting a massage is a much better way for me to soothe my emotional hunger...because I can tell you, no amount of popcorn will do it! In leadership, facilitation, coaching and transformation work, we need to learn to take deep care of ourselves since we are constantly caring for others. It's only when we give ourselves real nourishment, that we can care for and nourish others. Like the sign in the airplane says "Put your own oxygen mask on first". The Work is in You & The Leader you want to be If you listen back to my episodes with Alisa Cohn (a different spelling and a very different type of coach!) she talks about how "the work is in you"...the idea that as we grow and develop, we have to find new resources in ourselves: ways to be firm and decisive, to be bigger and the CEO others need us to be...while being and staying true to ourselves. As Amy Jen Su (Author of The Leader You Want to Be) said in our conversation about leadership development coaching, "we need to find our own North Star". I truly believe that Interoception is an absolute key to personal growth and transformation from the inside out. Also..we all eat and try to diet, to control ourselves...so stop! Eat ALL the popcorn and mac-n-cheese if you want to...and listen to your body when it says you have had enough. The Body Keeps Score If you can learn to listen to your inner signals,you'll know when your gut tells you your client is gaslighting you, or if the deck isn't actually right (versus all the changes everyone wants to make!), or when to say what needs to be said. In my coaching work, I have to hear the voices in my head and trust that sometimes, it's intuition...and sometimes I'm getting ahead of the conversation - that rushing feeling in my stomach could be my excitement to share my insights instead of bringing them out of the person in front of me. It's a dance. I like to joke: If we don't listen to our intuition, it just might pack up and head off to someplace where it's more appreciated. So, welcome your Interoception, your body wisdom, and give it a place of pride. Honor it! Alissa's book, Unapologetic Eating could also be called "Unapologe

"Somewhere between action and reaction there is an interaction, and that's where all the magic and fun lies" So says author Tyson Yunkaporta, in his book Sand Talk, How Indigenous Thinking can save the World, my guest for this conversation. Towards the end of the book, Tyson is explaining the meaning of Ngak Lokath, an Aboriginal word for the brackish water that forms in the wet season when fresh water floods into the sea...an example of what the Yolngu Tribe calls Ganma, a phenomenon of dynamic interaction when opposite forces meet and create something new… ...many pages later he picks up this thread saying: "There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indiginous and non-Indiginous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting." This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters… I see all conversations in this way, too: as flowing, tidal forces. We can push and pull the waters, like the moon, to exert force on it, but the conversation still sloshes around with it's own inertia. Power can form, transform or deform conversations, and the historical power disparity between so-called mainstream culture and indigenous cultures has prevented a great deal of potential insight and transformation, the opportunity to live and work in accordance with a natural order, rather than against it. Tyson's book does an extraordinary job of grounding ideas in physical reality. Tyson offers us a thought experiment: Risk, viewed through an indigenous lens. If you cross a river once, there's a risk of being taken by a crocodile. The first time, the risk is minimal, but if you do it twice, the risk is greater. Non-Aborginal statistics and risk calculation would take the risk and multiply it - It assumes that the risk is random each time. But it's not. As Tyson says "The crocodile is not an abstract factor in an algorithm, but a sentient being who observed you the first time and will be waiting for you the second time" (emphasis mine). The risk goes up exponentially. So what? Tyson asks us to think about the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, when non-Aboriginal thinkers insured bets against losses, and then bet on the outcomes of those insurance bets. As he says, "In a cross--cultural dialogue, we might see that the problem with this model is that every time you create a new layer of derivatives...you double the size of the system, you do not merely double the risk...you multiply it exponentially" I learned a lot from Tyson's book, most notably, about Yarning, the Aboriginal approach to group dialogue, knowledge creation, sharing and decision making. Also: Yarning about Yarning is fun, informative and oh-so-meta! Yarning, in Aboriginal culture, is based on sharing stories and coming to decisions through mutual respect, active listening and humor. There is no talking stick in Australian Aboriginal Yarning (That's something the iroquois created), just an organic back-and-forth and the creation of a space without a stage to share experiences, to draw on the ground and sketch ideas out to illustrate a point. Yarning is a rich and powerful tradition for anyone to transform their gatherings to be more deeply human. Sand Talk, the drawings on the ground that are a natural part of these conversations - roots the dialog in the land and makes the complex clear, if not simple. Tyson's book suggests that Indigenous thinking can save the world, and I agree. Our meetings and gatherings could use some more Sand Talk: More listening, more visuals, more mutual respect, more conversation. In the opening quote, Tyson points to the idea that human cognition is rooted in navigation, spatial thinking and relatedness...all bound up in a place and a story. Modern living and modern work have resulted in a deep sense of disorientation and disconnection...and working online, remotely, has only made this sense even more acute. Indigenous thinking, grounded in relatedness, rooted in and within a specific landscape, is deeply orientating and connecting. I believe it is a leader's job to create a sense of orientation where there is disorientation, and connection where there is disconnection, always pointing towards the north star, or your southern cross. Especially when leading through a transformation. Change is disorientating. Moving to a new place, a new land is strange and painful. For more on that, it's worth checking out my conversation with Bree Groff about the 6 types of grief and loss in organizational change. My conversation with Tyson is non-linear and complex...like any good yarn, it wanders a fair bit...so, I hope you'll take the time to read his book and absorb the

For almost two decades, Amy Jen Su has partnered with investment professionals, CEOs, and executives to sustain and increase their leadership effectiveness as they drive organizational change and transformation. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Press book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles to Bringing Out Your Best Self – Every Day. Amy and I dive deep on leadership, and how who you are as a person affects the organization you're leading, for better or worse. This means that self-leadership and mindfulness are essential for leaders, and we unpack Amy's approaches to these dimensions of leadership. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to strengthen their center and be a more balanced, more effective leader. And as Amy says in the opening quote, there is no one way for everyone to lead...we each need to find our own north star and our own thread to follow in the story of our own leadership development. Cultivating Our Inner Conversation One insight that I was so glad to have Amy "yes and '' is my feeling about the deep importance of our inner conversation - the parts of ourselves that cheer and check us. As Amy says, "some of these voices no longer serve us, and in fact disempower us" She suggests that we stay updated with our current selves, and know when it's time to let go of voices that no longer serve us. Cultivating an outer conversation: Finding mentors and supporters Amy advises us to consider: "who are (your) cheerleaders and safe harbors (and how can you build) a network of support that can also live life with us and ride alongside us as leaders and as people." She suggests that you find and recruit folks like the "sausage maker, the accountability buddy, the mirror, the cheerleader, the safe harbor, the helicopter" People who you feel safe sharing the nitty-gritty with, folks who keep you accountable to your goals, people who help you see yourself as you are, who cheer you on, who can be a safe harbor, and people who can pull you out of the dumps when you are down. It's hard to find that all in one person. For many, their spouses serve too many of those roles! Finding a coach like Amy or myself can help you maintain a regular cadence of attention to these modes of reflection and growth and get to your North Star...and find your next star, too. Mindfulness is Key. But it's not about feeling good. Amy and I talk about how mindfulness is very popular right now, but often not considered in its full context. Amy points out that: "I think one of the misnomers about mindfulness though is that somehow if you start meditating or having a mindfulness practice you're going to feel these wonderful happiness mood states all the time... It's getting to the truth, whether that's a painful emotion or a positive emotion, you're tuning into what reality is... Mindfulness... with razor clarity, (help you) actually come to reality." Amy Jen at Paravis Partners Amy Jen's books: Own the Room The Leader You Want to Be Thich Nhat Hanh: "How do I stay in the present moment when it feels unbearable?" Mary Oliver's Wild Geese: You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Accesshttps://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

In this episode, Alisa Cohn and I talk through Art of Coaching and also one of my favorite ways of looking at Leadership: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. A Coaching mindset is a transformative way to show up for others and yourself, so I'm excited to share these insights from Alisa, since she was named the Top Startup Coach in the World, and she has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. If you're stepping up as a leader, or are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work. Everyday Coaching A coaching mindset can be powerfully transformative, so even if you don't have a startup, even if you're not a coach... if your you're not even an official leader, or even if you just want to be a good friend, you'll find lessons in this conversation with Alisa that you can use in your work and life, everyday Coaching is a conversational process that works with someone to help them improve, from the inside out. Alisa shares some of her most powerful coaching questions and all about how the most impactful coaching conversation she's ever had was only 8 minutes long. Alisa and I got right into the heart of coaching, with her sharing some essential, fundamental conversational approaches to the coaching process like: >>firm and gentle inquiry>>moving from the presenting problem to the context>>Trusting your curiosity>>Staying Loose!>>Trust that they have an answer...that the work is in them. As Alisa said: "All my clients want me to tell them how to do it or what to do. They'll ask me a question and my answer is, "Well, listen, I wouldn't be any kind of a coach if I didn't get a chance to say, 'What do you think?" >>Alisa will ask "What if you did know?" and push her clients to sit with the question. The act of reflecting is helpful no matter what springs up. >>The ability to reflect will help with one of the absolute key executive skills: choosing a response versus having a reaction. Alisa actually quotes Victor Frankl's blockbuster thoughts on this capacity: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. A coach isn't all warm and fuzzy listening though…My coach calls his approach "tapping someone's bottle"...pointing out the limits to someone's thinking. When Alisa wants to push back I heard her use the phrase: "Well, that's how I invite you to think about it." Alisa will step in with her perspective but without force. A tap isn't a shove! Asking "How is this situation serving you?" is a gentle challenge. What to Expect in a Coaching Relationship...and why you might need a coach If you are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work. Alisa and I talked through one of my favorite ideas: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. One huge challenge of being a leader is that, as she says "You have to grow and learn to communicate differently and behave differently as your company grows." Alisa and I talk about how to find new ways of tapping into your inner humanity and show up authentically, no matter the situation. Just because the board says "you need to have more conviction" doesn't mean you have to become a jerk, or invert how you want to be. It's about finding ways to be passionate and firm that work for you. In my own experience, I've found that, as a coach and a coachee, a powerful conversation can help me find my own, authentic path forward, through having a conversation with my own inner parts. It's hard to do that on your own...having a coach as part of the conversation can be transformative. Alisa also points out that coaching has to be 3-Dimensional, because we are 3-Dimensional. As we grow as leaders, she thinks of three dimensions of growth: we have to grow in our self management, our skill in managing others, and, of course, in managing the business. A powerful coach is going to make you look at all three. Alisa's website Alisa on LinkedIn Alisa on Twitter Alisa on Jeff Gothelf's Forever Employable series Alisa Rapping! Check yourself before you Wreck yourself Enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And make sure to head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Mike Sagun is a certified professional men's coach, and he has partnered with companies like DropBox, LinkedIn, and Google. Mike also partners with EVRYMAN, where he hosts men's groups, facilitates men's retreats, coaches individuals, and co-leads EVRYMAN's diversity and inclusion program. I met Mike through the work we've done together in EVRYMAN's programs, and I was delighted to have him on the show to get his perspective on facilitation, coaching, leading intimacy online...and just how important it is to create the space to connect with ourselves. Doing deep, transformative work online is critically important...certainly in the pandemic, it's essential to be able to keep connecting with people. And as we transition into a hybrid future, it's important to remember how virtual connection has made so much of the world more accessible. I always remember an NPR story from the start of the pandemic where a wheelchair bound individual was thrilled that they could finally go to church without all of the hassle of transportation. Worlds opened up for so many as well all went online. As hard as making space and time to connect online is, it's worth doing and worth doing well. Many facilitators and leaders still say that "in person was better" or "virtual will never be like in person" to which I say...yes, indeed. They are different animals. My conversation with Mike Sagun will help you see how deep online work can be, both in groups and one-on-one. My own men's group has struggled with the online transition, so I visited the Drop In Men's Group Mike hosts each Friday to see how he does it. I was excited to see that, in the first moments of the session, MIke formed clear and powerful boundaries for the group of 30 men, and did everything and more that I advise folks to do when they want to build a more powerful group connection. These's nothing fancy to it. Like some of the best food experiences, it's about good ingredients, treated with respect. My experience of Mike's facilitative presence was just smooth, open and easy. His pace is not rushed. Some of the things I spotted him doing, which we'll dig into in our conversation were: Greet the people. Connect with them, ask for how to pronounce names. 1. Being Explicit about agreements. What is this space for? What isn't it for? 2. Slow Down. Close whatever came before with a moment of mindfulness. 3. Passing the mike - giving power and control to others in the group to lead parts. 4. Breakout to connect. Smaller groups help create more safety and connection. 5. Assign "captains" of each breakout and give a clear, focused prompt. 6. Get people to share from that breakout. 7. In larger groups, give someone the time-awareness job so you can focus on connecting. That last element was one of my favorite moments, of Mike setting clear and safe boundaries for presence and connection. Mike asked someone to put in the chat when someone's share out had reached four minutes. He clarified "When it's four minutes, it doesn't mean your time is up. It just means that you've been talking for four minutes." I sometimes call this practice "giving people jobs so you can do yours" and Mike did an amazing job of it. Giving away jobs helps people feel responsible for the space, in control...and it frees up mental space for you to focus on the most impactful aspects of your presence. Mike also broke down three levels of listening, which are a powerful key to mastering virtual presence. Level One is where you are doing what some would call "cosmetic" listening. You're there with a person but you're already thinking about what you're going to say next. Level Two listening is being deeply engaged in the person. As Mike says "We're listening to every single consonant of the word that they're saying and we are very fully tuned in to their story or what they're talking about. Level two listening is one of the most powerful gifts that you can offer for someone. Just being there for that person to use you as a sound(ing) board." Level Three listening expands to what's happening within ourselves internally and in the environment. I've heard some folks call this "global listening". Here, Mike suggests that we might notice "what's happening in their body language and their micro facial expressions. Then also, what's happening in the environment... then also what's happening outside in the world. What's happening in the culture, what's happening in politics." This level of listening is tremendously powerful, to be able to hold the conversation with the other person, with ourselves and with the larger world, all at once. As Mike says "Level three listening is one of the greatest gifts that we can offer someone but also what we can offer ourselves... especially when we're facilitating a space like this." So there you have it...the secrets to presence. As Mike said in the opening quote: "holding that space, I think what's most important is first checking in with ourselves and noticing how you show up.

Tomomi Sasaki and I sat down to talk in-depth about her journey of self-awareness and inner work as a facilitator. We met at an advanced facilitation masterclass I ran for Google at their Sprint Conference, way back in 2018. She tweeted at the end of 2020: I've been facilitating workshops for about a decade. The first few years were ferocious, needs-based learning. Workshops took a tremendous amount of energy to plan and run, and after each one, I'd faceplant onto the nearest sofa. Once things became manageable, I plateaued. I worked on plenty of facilitation assignments (and did a bunch of public speaking about lessons learned) but I was coasting and I knew it. Then @kaihaley and the @GoogleDesign Sprint Conference gave me the gift of a full day training from @dastillman, and I started to think of facilitation as a practice. (you can listen to my conversation with Kai Haley here.) Building a practice sends a different kind of signal into the universe. This gives me watershed experiences that blows apart a door I didn't know was there. Behind each door is a whole new landscape to explore, and new friends to explore it with. It happens consistently, once or twice a year. I don't know what's behind that cadence but it is an amazing thing. You *think* you know the edges of the land and then... ah hah! It gets me every time. It had been a while since we'd connected, but when I read that twitter thread, I knew we had to sit down to talk about her journey to thinking about facilitation as a practice and what that meant. Tomomi is a designer and partner at the independent design studio AQ, and a frequent collaborator of Enterprise Design Associates. She's also a top-notch facilitator and, as you might have learned by now, a very reflective practitioner, and in this episode she gives some invaluable advice about how to improve at the skill of facilitation - beyond tips and tricks. I loved it when Tomomi said that "The insight for me was that I need to take care of who I am and what I'm bringing into the room as a facilitator because that's part of what's going to happen in the dynamics." Tomomi is essentially saying in her own words what Bill O'Brien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance said, that "The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener." When we facilitate, when we lead a group, we are noticing the system...and what we choose to respond to, focus on or call out will shift what happens in the system. The question here is...how do you affect change in a complex system...that YOU are part of? Many people treat learning and change like a purely technical challenge: They have a deficit in performance and the assumption is that they can learn better ways of doing and apply them. Similarly, we think we can apply a pattern or tool (like a facilitated workshop agenda, exercise or the like) and get a reliable result - like a baking recipe. But any bread baker will tell you that the weather, the flour and your mood can shift how things go. Dough is alive. There are two challenges with this mechanical, recipe, way of thinking...one is that people and systems of people are complex...so, the likelihood of things going exactly according to plan without any need for adaptation and improvisation is...unlikely. People, like dough, are alive. The other issue is that many people think it's new and better ways of doing that are needed...where it's actually different ways of thinking, different mental models and assumptions...which will naturally lead to different ways of doing. Some folks (Chris Argyris and Donald Schön) describe this as the difference between single-loop and double-loop learning and others even point to triple and even quadruple loop learning...the core of which could be self-awareness, or seeing how we ourselves can affect the system. This is the transition from facilitation and leadership as "doing to" or performance to "doing with" and presence. The way you show up internally will change what happens in the session. https://organizationallearning9.wordpress.com/single-and-double-loop-learning/ As Tomomi says later in our conversation, "I think what struck me was that in facilitation, we think so much about the participants, and the first question you basically asked in the master class was who are you? Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about that, and I think that's why I was getting so burnt out. You give and give without really an awareness of what you're doing to yourself or what you need to be. Then the realization is that, oh, that's where your strength comes from, it's where the practice needs to be built on, because you can't change that much, right?... So, might as well work with what you have. " I care deeply about this idea. I think that facilitation and leadership more generally, is about expanding your range of capabilities - your ability to show up, on purpose, as the occasion calls for it. Tomomi suggests we can't change *that much...but we can try t

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel PhD, is the Associate Director for Design Thinking for Social Impact, and Professor of Practice at the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University, where she teaches design thinking from an emancipatory perspective. Design Thinking is a powerful set of tools and mindsets that can help people solve problems. But which people and which problems? So first off, if you're new to this conversation, design and design thinking can be racially biased, because people are racially biased. As Dr. Noel says in the opening quote I chose, most of us don't understand our positionality - especially if you see yourself as "white". It's essential to see and understand what position are we looking *from* when we look *at* people and the problems we seek to solve for them. Design is, in essence, making things better, on purpose, and it's a fundamental human drive: To improve our situation by remaking our surroundings. But when we design for and with other people, the process becomes more complex. So, you might not see yourself as a designer, but if you solve problems for other people or build systems that other people use to solve problems, you might be a designer in the broadest sense, or design thinker, even by accident. So...you need to get serious and clear about how you learn about problems (ie, do research), frame them and solve them for others (ie, design - attempt to make something better on purpose). If you do see yourself as a Design Thinker, you might feel challenged by Dr. Noel's reflections on Design Thinking, not as a set of Boxes to be ticked, but as a universe of different ways of thinking and knowing. Dr. Noel makes beautiful diagrams and models for the creative process that breaks out of the hexagons and double diamonds beautifully. I recommend checking out the screenshots I've taken of some of these models from her talks in the Links section Another resource I suggest you dive into is Dr. Noel's Positionality Worksheet, 12 Elements to help you and your team see the "water they're swimming in." You can also check out a Mural version I mocked up. As Dr. Noel writes in her excellent Medium article "My Manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity and bias in design" it's essential to start with positionality, for yourself and for your teams. That's point one. Who are you in relation to the people you are working with and solving for? Point Two of her manifesto is about seeing color, oppression, injustice and bias. For this I recommend getting a deck of her Designer's Critical Alphabet cards on Etsy. They're awesome! Point 3 might surprise you: Dr. Noel suggests that we "Forget Diversity, Equity and Inclusion"...and instead embrace Pluriversality. DNI assumes an inside and an outside, an includer and the included. Pluriversality looks to remove the center and honors multiple ways of knowing and doing, each with its own valid center. It's nice to believe in a single ultimate truth for everyone...but that's not going to happen. Pluriversality suggests that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality. Pluriversality is essential for our time - finding a path forward together while respecting other's paths and ways. Pluriversality was a new term for me. I suggest you watch Dr. Noel's talk at UC Davis on Embracing Pluriversal Design to learn more. And I suggest you read the rest of her Manifesto for yourself! I am thrilled to share Dr. Noel's ideas on DeColonizing Design Thinking. It's a critical conversation for our time. Design Thinking still has so much to offer the world if we are willing to lean into it and engage in dialogue with fresh and evergreen interpretations of it. People have been designing for as long as we've been people. Learning and respecting the pluriverse of Design Thinking in all cultures can deliver powerful progress. Enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Dr. Noel's website Dr. Noel at Tulane University Dr. Noel's Critical Literacy Alphabet Alberini Family Speaker Series Lecture Dr. Noel's manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity, and bias in design

Today I have a deep dive conversation with the magnetic Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute and a respected voice in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. Kwame also hosts one of the world's most popular negotiation podcasts, Negotiate Anything. Kwame and I dig into how to be confident in the face of conflict: Confident during a difficult conversation, and confident in yourself, before you step into the conversation. As he points out, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen! So confidence is critical. This is one of the most fundamental points that many people miss about negotiating - they see it as a series of tips, tricks and tactics, but it's really about a way of thinking. But before you start any negotiation with another person, you have one with yourself. You convince yourself that you deserve more than you are currently getting, you resolve to speak up. In Negotiation-speak, this is sometimes called the aspiration value - what you aspire to get. But often there's another part of ourselves that tells us exactly the opposite - we don't deserve what we want or we shouldn't bother asking, or that we'll never get it, no matter how hard we negotiate. These parts need to have a conversation and negotiate an approach that feels right to ourselves. Kwame's book, Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life spends a great deal of time on this inner negotiation and the tools to help you step up, including mindfulness and self-compassion. What I love about Kwame's approach to negotiation is that the patterns to shift a negotiation with another person are the same tools he suggests to shift a negotiation with yourself: Compassionate Curiosity. Force and coercion are not effective long-term negotiation or conversation strategies with another person...and they don't work very well when we apply them to ourselves, either. Forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do...it usually backfires, right? Kwame suggests applying a 3-step process to be compassionately curious with difficult conversations - a way through challenging disagreements with others or ourselves. Acknowledge emotions Get Curious with compassion Joint problem solving About halfway through our conversation, Kwame talks about how it's hard to force yourself to not worry and what to do instead: It's better to admit that we DO feel worried and seek to understand why. Like in any negotiation, get curious about what data there is on the other side of the table...in this case, what there is to worry about…and then start problem solving. How likely are those scenarios? What can we do about each? It's much easier to negotiate a time-boxed worrying session with yourself than it is to push it off. Leaning into difficult conversations is always more rewarding than avoiding them - this is doubly true with yourself. Enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and make sure to check out Kwame's resources on ways to transform negotiation, resources for learning negotiation, and useful meditation techniques: check out Kwame's TEDx talk, the negotiate anything podcast and The American negotiation Institute. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider The American Negotiation Institute Kwame Christian's TEDx talk, "Finding Confidence in Conflict" Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life by Kwame Christian Negotiate Anything podcast Ask With Confidence podcast Linda Babcock study Women Don't Ask book

Coming together is an essential human drive, one that not even a global viral pandemic can fully put a damper on. Many of us have been meeting *more* than ever before as workshops and conferences have gone online all over the world. With vaccines starting to be released in some countries, the question on everyone's lips is "when can we get back together?" There are lots of guesses but no one knows for sure. If you're planning events for mid-year 2021, I hope you have a crystal ball *and* that you listen to the rest of this episode. Meredith Kaganovskiy shares her wisdom and experience with us. She's a certified meeting professional, a certified digital events strategist and the Senior Project Manager of the DIA Global Annual Meeting. We talk about her herculean efforts in taking a 7000 person-strong flagship event into a virtual one with weeks to spare and dive deep into Meredith's philosophy of experience-driven events planning, as well as her "two experiences, one meeting" motto for the hybrid future on the horizon. I feel lucky to have been able to work with Meredith and Robyn Weinick, the Global Program Officer on this project as their coach over a few very intense weeks and provide them a space and place to think and build a vision for the experience they were trying to create, working to think past the challenges and restrictions that technology placed on them. The Hybrid Bridge Meredith suggests that the old-school way of doing hybrid - a bridge to take questions and insights from the virtual space into the "real" space - is no longer enough. This once "wowed" audiences and helped in-person event planners expand their audiences and reach. The Virtual-First Platform Meredith believes that it's now table-stakes to have a lively, interactive and self-contained virtual platform for remote attendees. The bridge between the in-person and virtual experiences used to be mostly one-way, with in-person taking the lead. Meredith predicts that the hybrid future of events means that the bridge between virtual and in-person needs to be more broad and two-way - a real conversation between equals. And that just like an in-person meeting, a virtual meeting has to provide a range of conversational spaces: from intimate opportunities to connect, to larger arenas for learning and listening, balancing curated conversations and more open-doors dialogs. Meredith also shares her broader philosophy of event planning, how she visualizes the personality of a meeting and much more. Enjoy the conversation as much as I did recording it. Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

I'm so thrilled to share this conversation with you. Meeting Fred Dust came, as all the best things in life do, through a series of random conversations. Fred is a former global managing partner at the acclaimed design firm IDEO. He currently consults with the Rockefeller Foundation on the future of global dialogue, and with other foundations, like The Einhorn Family Fund to host constructive dialogue. His work is dedicated to rebuilding human connection in a climate of widespread polarization and cynicism. I will tread lightly on this introduction. Fred's book, Making Conversation, is both a straightforward and delightfully lyrical book about how to see conversations as an act of creativity. We are never just participants in a conversation...we're co-creators. And we can step up and re-design our conversations if we look with new eyes. I'll share one surprisingly simple tool from Fred's book that I've started to use in my own coaching work. A director I am working with sketched out a whole script about how they wanted to address some concerns her direct reports had. After reading over the approach, I asked them: "If you could choose 3 adjectives to describe how you want your reports to feel after this conversation, what would they be?" They thought for a moment, and provided some words. These adjectives are the goal and the way. "Looking over this conversation script, do you think you'll get those three words out of this conversation map?" On reflection, it was clear that there were some simple changes to make. Brainstorming adjectives also allowed us to have a deeper conversation about what their goals were - what were they really hoping to get out of the conversation? Searching for those adjectives was clarifying. This is the power of reflecting on your design principles. It's easy to get lost in the weeds of an agenda or a meeting...but if you know your design principles, why you're committing to the conversation and how you want someone to feel after the conversation is over, it can provide powerful clarity when you're sailing through the fog. Finding someone else in the world who's taking a design lens on conversations and communication is so delightful for me. Fred's work feels like the other side of the coin of my own. Enjoy the conversation and enjoy his book, Making Conversation, which is out now. You can also find Fred on twitter as @FREDDUST. Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources Find Fred on Twitter @FREDDUST A video trailer for the book His book on Amazon. The origins of brainstorming Min 7 I don't consider myself a facilitator. Certainly, I can facilitate conversations and that's what I like to do and I like doing that, but I really consider myself a designer of conversations. What that means is it allows us to kind of step back and say, "I don't have to be the one, I don't have to be in the conversation. The conversation can be successful." Often what I'll do is I'll design structures for conversations where somebody else entirely can run them. Min 8 when you start to think of conversation as an act of creativity or if you don't self-identify as somebody who's creative as an act of making, so just like something that you can make, everybody's a maker of some form or another. It allows you to say, "Wait a second, I don't have to just be a victim to this conversation. I can make the construct of the conversation. I can make the rules." Min 11 Dining rooms became vestigial in America... Often dining rooms became offices and other things. Then not only that, gradually we put TVs everywhere and so in a world where the last thing… Not to get too intimate, but how does having a television in your bedroom affect your… If you have with your partner? The last thing or first thing you're seeing is something. Min 20: Have as few rules as possible Right now I would say, what I'm finding is four rules are often even too much because I think I had a limit of four. I would say given our brain's capacity during COVID and during the political strife and just this, the social moment we're in and our fear and anxiety, I'm pretty good with two. Min 32 Against Active Listening The point is we've adopted active listening and put it into places it was never really intended to be. It was not meant to be the primary language of human resources, HR. It was not meant to be a boss's way of not listening to the complaints of a person who reports them and that's how we use it now. We use it as a way of signaling a subtle form of agreement but not really. Min 49 On encouraging the world to start designing conversations...and taking time for self care! "You can do this. Don't think you can't." But by the way, if you can't, it's okay to just take a break and go lie down on the floor . Min 53 On keeping a conversations notebook: write down the conversations you thought really worked and you start to say, "What worked about those conversations?"... you start to discover in your own world, what those things are (that work) Min 56

Today I talk with Adam Kahane, a Director at Reos Partners. Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country's transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid. He's gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between. He's also amazingly open and honest about his growth and transformation as a facilitator, and his own failings along the way. It's encouraging to hear him talk about feeling a little like a cobbler without shoes. Shouldn't a breakthrough facilitator be able to facilitate the conflicts in their own lives with the same ease? It turns out, it's not that simple. Adam is also honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy,Transformative Scenario Planning and Solving Tough problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt while you wait for Adam's 2021 book, Facilitating Breakthrough, to come out. It's all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it's an eye-opener. I've had the opportunity to read a draft copy of the book and I'm really excited for you all to read it and learn about how to, as Adam says, "Fluidly" navigate these polarities in your own transformational work. Just a side note: The opening quote for this episode is actually two quotes that I'm juxtaposing. I loved this simple summary of the book as a fluid navigation of polarities alongside the sentiment that the only action you can take is your next one. You make a choice, and see what happens. Designing conversations can become as static and dangerously waterfall as any old-school product design team's backlog. Being agile and responsive in the moment requires clarity on your core values and principles...and Adam's book and ideas can help us develop our own core north stars as we navigate complex and collaborative change. Learn more about Adam's work at www.reospartners.com , www.reospartners.com/adamkahane and find him on twitter at @adamkahane. Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider Links Learn more about Adam's work at www.reospartners.com and www.reospartners.com/adamkahane Find him on twitter at @adamkahane. Talks by Adam: Adam Kahane at Ci2012 - "Transformative Scenario Planning" Power and Love: Adam Kahane at TEDxNavigli How To Change the Future - Adam Kahane Polarity Management by Barry Johnson Adam's Father's Favorite Book: Science and Sanity Barry Johnson's work, which provided a foundation form Adam's new book: Polarity Management

Today I talk with Demetrius Romanos, SVP of Design & Development at Ergobaby. Demtrius has been my boss, my client and is also my friend! Demetrius has worked on leading design on products of all shapes and sizes, from chocolate bars to medical devices and from laptop bags to baby carriers...and everything in between. I'm excited to share a deep conversation about design leadership. We discuss how to invite more of the behaviours you want in your team, how to lead with humility and how working across the whole organization to build a design system can get the whole team to think more deeply about what they deliver...and more importantly, why they deliver it. So many people come to me asking me to help their team develop a shared vision and a shared language of problem solving...Demetrius shares his insights on how to do just that, gently and relentlessly, over time. When I teach teams about problem solving, I often break down the most famous of Design Thinking tools, the "How might we" statement, into 3 key parts. Might indicates possibility...it's not about how *must* we or how *will* we solve this challenge...Might, in this way, helps make problems "huggable" (as an old business partner of mine liked to say). We indicates that we are in this challenge, together. It's not about how Must You or how Should They solve this challenge. Demetrius embodies these two aspects in his design leadership: Possibility and Togetherness. But it's the first word of the phrase that (surprisingly) does the most of all: How implies that a solution can exist if we put effort into it. The core truth of the design mindset is that a solution is possible, that design can get us out of this challenge. It's optimism Everything around us has been designed, usually by someone else, in the past: our offices and digital tools, our calendar and clocks. Our financial structures and org structures. Choosing to look at the current state of affairs and *not* throwing your hands up in despair, not blaming whoever came first, but rolling up your sleeves and getting started, believing that design, that intentionality can make a difference, is the essence of design and the essence of leadership. I've learned a lot from Demetrius over the years, but in this conversation, I am reminded of the power of warmth and optimism to lead change. Enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources Min 1: Design to me is about facilitating change in a meaningful way. It's not just about aesthetically making something better or focusing on this one aspect of a user experience, but really taking into account a big picture and a small picture, and doing it in a way that makes sense. Min 9, on the value of doing the work to create a design system: the end benefit was that we got so deep into who we are and recognizing the values that our brand makes for our products and for our end users. It just changes now how people talk about what we do internally. Min 13, on how to build alignment through design: Small wins, I think is the best way to put it. My career, especially the last, probably 15 years has been very much about driving organizational change with through design, but I don't do it in a silo. It's all about collaboration, but you have to bring people along on the ride...People can say, "Hey, I see the value in this." It's simple as that. It's not about me, it's about the process. If they believe in what the output was and what they got out of it, if they felt better afterwards than they did going in, then I've done a big part of my job. By the time I got them to this design language workshop, there was still uncertainty, but they were comfortable with me being their guide along the ride. Min 35 on Design Leadership: You lead with what's the big vision. What are we trying to achieve? You lead by giving them a safe place to explore, you lead by assigning sub leaders, making people feel empowered to do what they do, and to come back and surprise you with something you might not have asked for. I think it's a bigger role, frankly. Bigger in the sense that you're not just the facilitator that's going to ask the questions and create the worksheets and all that stuff for like a finite period of time. You're really teaching skills and you're encouraging things that are different. It's forcing the folks that you assign as sub-leaders to really be that. I think it's helping people grow faster. Min 44 on Humility and Respect Leadership: I was always taught to respect ... you've heard this kind of stuff before, respect the janitor just like you respect the CEO. We're just all people. At the end of the day, we're just all little creatures on this earth trying to do our thing to move the ball down the field a little bit. So, if we just all have a little bit of humility, work well together, no one has to be best friends at work, but we sure work better when we like each other, and then we see a bigger reason for doing what we do. Getting people t

"Stop thinking about drawing as an artistic process. Drawing is a thinking process. If you want to think more clearly about an idea, draw it." This is the simple essence of Dan Roam's message. Dan has written five best-selling books about visual thinking and storytelling. Back of the Napkin was one of my seminal texts, Show and Tell is a blockbuster if you want to learn how to tell better stories...and who doesn't? And you have to love the title of Dan's book "Draw to Win"...maybe the most direct distillation of Dan's perspective. Drawing is thinking...and thinking helps you do better work. Who should be drawing when many brains are involved in a complex project? What Dan helped me wrestle with in this conversation is how drawing helps groups think, together and how he, as a model-making expert, can help push the thinking of a group. We talk through the yin-and-yang of a top-down approach of model making (with someone like Dan pushing the edge of excellence *for* a group he's working with, vs a group hammering out a new model, bottom-up, doing visual synthesis together. Both are powerful ways to lead a conversation. Making a framework for a group can shape their conversation profoundly - the right visual tool can frame a conversation and ease the progress of a team's thinking: Drawing a classic 2 X 2 creates a frame, a container for a conversation. I've always found that, even if someone finds a case that falls outside of the framework offered, they speak about their ideas in relation to the framework - the conversation has been anchored - which is one way to think about what I am calling Conversational Leadership. There is power and danger in shaping conversations. Leading the conversation can mean that we've prevented something else from emerging - something organic, co-created and co-owned by the whole group. This is the IKEA effect...even if something that Dan makes might be technically better than what a group can make on it's own, they may value what they've put their hands on more. As with all polarities, the middle path, approaching both ends flexibly, is the most powerful. I know from experience how transformative it can be when your client picks up the pen and adds their ideas alongside yours. Who picks up the pen first can shift the direction of the conversation profoundly. Stepping back and offering the pen to the group is a choice we can all take to shift a conversation. Drawing is how to win in the broadest sense. If you're the only person drawing in the conversation, you will anchor the conversation and lead the conversation. If you get everyone to draw, the conversation will be a win-win and led by anyone willing to take up the pen. Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Links, Notes and Resources Dan on the Web (learn about his award-winning books and his work and more…) Dan's Online Learning space: Napkin Academy Dan's favorite, most fundamental drawing: Some of my favorite visuals from Dan that you can find on the web... The Power of Visual Sensemaking as an organic process: How to think systematically about being visual: The simple shapes of Stories: Other books to learn more about visual thinking: Gamestorming The Doodle Revolution One of my favorite quotes from this interview: Data doesn't tell a story As I always like to say, data doesn't tell a story, people do. And Dan breaks down how to do that, in detail. As he says: "A good report brings data to life. When we do a report right, we deliver more than just facts, we deliver them in a way that gives insight. It makes data memorable and makes our audience care."

Diane Mulcahy is an advisor to both Fortune 500 companies and startups, is a regular contributor to Forbes and is the author of the bestselling book "The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want" Diane was early to the party: When she started teaching MBA students a course on these ideas, some people thought she was talking about Computer Memory. But what made me really want to talk to her was how she decided to go deeper into the topic via teaching - one of the most powerful ways to learn anything! I was also eager to learn more about how she helps organizations work with these trends, rather than against them - I wanted to learn about her approach as a coach and advisor. And you can see, her secret is slowing down conversations. The future of work is more than gigs on Lyft and Uber or Taskrabbit. Barbara Soalheiro, of the consultancy Mesa, in our conversation on the podcast back in season three posited that the best and the brightest wouldn't want a full time job in the future...which is why she's designed her innovation sprints to be one week - to help brands bring the best brains in for short sprints. This is why Diane finds tremendous opportunities to coach and advise organizations to adapt to and survive this transition in what people want from work. Traditional orgs need to put significant effort into shifting their cultures on: Trust in Management- Facetime isn't the same as work (ie, Clock and Chair Management doesn't work in this new world - for more on this, check out Diane's Forbes article on Trust) Projects over Jobs - Define clear outcomes and break up jobs into clear projects and deliverables. Processes and Systems - Internal systems have to adjust to be more nimble and customer-grade. We talk about the importance of slowing conversations down when there's internal resistance: Diane relates her sense that Orgs seem to be saying. "We know these things are happening. We know we have to respond," ...but then it turns out, they want to respond without really changing anything. Diane points out that that's not possible. The way through is patient conversation, and Diane gives me some deep pointers on shifting challenging conversations with silence. We also reminisce about travel and I try to get her to tell me what her next forward thinking, trend-setting MBA course will be on...which you'll have to listen to end to learn all about! Explore all things Diane Mulcahy Dianemulcahy.com where you can find links to her other books (she also writes about venture investing) and to many of her online articles. Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access Link: https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Conversation Analysis is a powerful tool that looks at large numbers of conversations to help build insights about what works and what doesn't. Elizabeth Stokoe is a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, and shares some key insights from her excellent book, Talk, the science of conversation and her well-received TedX talk. As she suggests in the opening quote, any conversation that you participate in has a landscape to it. What Conversation Analysis can do - and we are all conversation analysts, just not professional ones - is show us the texture of that landscape, and how to navigate the bumps in the road effectively. One surprising idea I absorbed from Professor Stokoe is in this quote, when she says that: "In a way, the best conversations might have some clumsy, awkward moments and through that way, you might move past it and into something more mutual" We know what is natural and easy because we know what feels clumsy. Seeing, accepting and moving past the clumsy can help us find a smoother path. We are the Turns We Take Elizabeth's idea that we are the turns we take, that speech acts are real acts, is a powerful one. And so is her idea that non-responsiveness or silence in reply to an awkward turn can get things "back on track". If someone comes in "hot" to a conversation an easy way to cool things down is to wait and let the person fix it themselves, as she says: "People will figure out that they just did something that was a bit off and fix it." What I really loved about talking with Professor Stokoe is that she busts conversation myths with ease - and Science! There are many popular ideas about conversations, from how they differ across cultures to how much communication consists of body language to how men and women speak differently - both in amounts and type. Professor Stokoe suggests that there are many more similarities than differences across cultures and genders. She is in fact, more interested in how we construct gender through speech, than how our biological gender influences speech. And she also reasonably suggests that if body language is 90% of communication, why can we communicate just fine over the phone? There is, as it turns out, very little science to support many such figures. Working with real conversations instead of simulations Elizabeth also casts very reasonable doubts on some of industry's favorite models to explore interactions, like secret shoppers - it turns out that people who are acting like customers don't act like customers. She also suggests that using role-play in training is not as effective as it could be. Conversational Analysis can offer better insights by studying real conversations en masse, in fine-grained detail. Be sure to listen all the way to minute 45 when we dive into group conversation dynamics and how people learn what behaviors are acceptable in a session in the opening seconds of an interaction. It is shocking how quickly the landscape of a conversation is built and surveyed by the participants. Links, Notes and Resources Elizabeth Stokoe's TEDx talk A deep dive on her work on the TED blog More on CARM training Elizabeth's excellent book, Talk On Body language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian "Mehrabian's findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes (the "7%-38%-55% Rule") are well-known, the percentages relating to relative impact of words, tone of voice, and body language when speaking. Arguably these findings have been misquoted and misinterpreted throughout human communication seminars worldwide" Lenny the anti-cold-calling chatbot More about conversation and gender from Professor Stokoe here.

I'm so excited to share this conversation with Oscar Trimboli, author of Deep Listening, a lovely book/card deck. We talk about the costs of not listening, the opportunities that are created when we listen and why hearing what's unsaid can transform your work and life. In our western conception, we have speaking and listening, a basic duality. Oscar describes our normal conception of listening as monochrome, two dimensional listening rather than multi-color, multi-sensory listening. Oscar has worked to absorb traditional approaches to listening from Inuit cultures in North America, to Australian Aboriginal cultures, as well Polynesian and Maori cultures. Oscar breaks down a 6-dimensional listening model that leverages a deeper understanding of the Chinese word for listening, Ting as well as an Aborginal concept for listening, Dadirri, which approaches listening from 3 dimensions - Self, Peoples and Lands. 125/900 and The Cost of Not Listening Oscar introduces us to the 125/900 rule - the simple fact that we can speak at 125 words a minute yet we can think at 900 words a minute. The basic math of conversation is that there will always be something unsaid. The Impact of this fact is impossible to calculate. In our daily work this can mean a misunderstanding, an argument, lost work or a delay. But Oscar points to two shocking examples: +we lost three critical weeks in the fight against the Coronavirus because the Chinese authorities weren't willing to listen to a doctor. On December 30, 2019 Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist in a Wuhan hospital, alerted six of his friends on WeChat saying, "There's a SARS-like virus that has a huge impact on the mortality of aged patients." Li was later asked to recant his statements and also later passed away from the disease. +August 27th, 2005, Dr. Raghuram Rajan, then head of the International Monetary Fund, spoke at the Federal Reserve annual Jackson Hole conference in 2005. Rajan warned about the growing risks in the financial system and proposed policies that would reduce such risks. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the warnings "misguided" and Rajan himself a "luddite". How to Listen to people you disagree with One final idea I want to highlight is how Oscar suggests to go about listening to those people we fiercely disagree with. He suggests, rather than work to convince them, simply ask" "when was the first time you formed that opinion?" The immediate impact is that it gets us out of talking points and into the starting point. It's a more human story. It's the beginning of empathy and of understanding the data that they are working with. Links, Notes and Resources Start here with Oscar's Listening Quiz More about Oscar on the web: www.listeningmyths.com

I'm thrilled to *finally* share my conversation with the amazing and electrifying Nikki Silvestri. We connected back in early March and recorded our conversation in late May, at the height of the quarantine. It's been a process to find the time to sit with this deep conversation and pull together some insights for you. A friend shared Nikki's work with me and I was hooked - Nikki was setting up a program to teach facilitation to Rural Women, and I was so curious to dive into her facilitation and leadership approach and her critical work. Nikki's core metaphor is soil - the complex place that gives life to us all - the source of our nourishment. Monoculture vs Food Forests Soil can be thought of as a series of inputs - minerals, water, carbon, etc. A mathematical equation for creating a space for life. But rich soil is not simple. It's a complex, living thing that responds unpredictably to attempts to control it. In agriculture we can have a food forest - a near-wild combination of plants and animals feeding each other and ourselves. Or, we can have a monoculture - sprawling spaces where we use as much science and technology as possible to sustain maximum outputs at all times and at all costs. Nikki suggests, rightly, that monocultures can also exist in our own organizations...and that when we have such a monoculture, when we are not doing what she calls "basic diversity and inclusion work" innovation and creativity will be lost. Esther Derby, a noted Agile consultant, touched on this forest metaphor in our podcast interview - she said that she would rewrite her whole book about leading change using food forests and forest succession as her central metaphor. Mechanistic thinking vs Complexity Thinking in Group Work and Leadership We push this metaphor of soil and complexity deeper into growing personal leadership and holding space for deep group work. Nikki describes the central tension: "I was trapped in mechanistic thinking because nonlinear complex thinking, it had too many unknowns and it made me too uncomfortable....With the amount of responsibility that I felt like I had, I needed to know. And frankly, I needed to know that I could manipulate my way into the linear outcome that I was looking for because there was "too much at stake" to not have that happen." After all, control is rewarded. As Nikki suggests: "The people who are able to manipulate, and dominate, and control the outcome the most are the ones who are rewarded." SUPPORT THE PODCAST AND GET INSIDER ACCESS https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider Links, Notes and Resources Nikki Silvestri on the web https://www.nikkisilvestri.com/ Nikki's TEDx Talk Nikki on Soil and Shadow Gestalt Organizational Development Carter's Cube (free login required)

Innovation Theater. Have you ever been guilty of performing innovation theater? My guest today, Tendayi Viki, is a partner at Strategyzer (the company behind the business model canvas and other innovation tools) and defines Innovation Theater simply as: ACTIVITIES THAT LOOK LIKE INNOVATION BUT THAT CREATE NO VALUE FOR COMPANIES So: A workshop that creates enthusiasm with no follow up. A Hackathon that doesn't solve real challenges. Training everyone in Design Thinking but changing no internal policies to encourage experimentation and prototyping. I've been guilty of it. How can we all do better? This is a delicate topic, because it's not wrong to want more people in your organization to "get" innovation and the practices that drive innovation. Then we'll have buy-in to do more, right? Support The Podcast As A Conversation Factory Insider https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider Full Transcript at: https://theconversationfactory.com/listen Links and Resources Tendayi on the web https://tendayiviki.com/ Tendayi at the Innov8ers Conference: https://innov8rs.co/beyond-the-sticky-notes-aligning-innovation-with-corporate-strategy-tendayi-viki/ Tendayi's latest book: Pirates in the Navy https://www.strategyzer.com/

I'm so excited to share my conversation with Casper ter Kuile. He has a book coming out this month, The Power of Ritual. He breaks down the architecture of ritual and how to bring more intentional ritual into your work and life. I love the four "categories" of ritual Casper lays out in his book- those for connecting with yourself, rituals that connect you to others, nature, and to something transcendent. I first encountered Casper's work through his company, The Sacred Design Lab, and their free PDF, which you should totally download, How we Gather. It showed how the breakdown of organized religion has opened up an ecological niche, if you will, for brands like Crossfit and Tough Mudder to become one of many places that we get meaning and belonging from - instead of just one place of workship. Casper's work is like Biomimicry (studying nature for design inspiration) ..but for religion. Whether you are religious or not, studying religion to understand how it plays a role in people's lives delivers some powerful insights. Casper's work shows us just how powerful those insights are. As he says in the opening quote, we need to be intentional about which rituals we lift up and celebrate because they each tell a story...every myth is communicated from generation to generation through the rituals that we maintain. What rituals make up your work life and home life? How do you measure and mark time? I hope you enjoy the conversation, and start harnessing the power of ritual! Support the Podcast and get insider access Full transcription and more on the conversation factory Casper on the web: https://www.caspertk.com/ The Power of Ritual: The Sacred Design Lab: https://sacred.design/who-we-are Their amazing free resources are here More about Casper Casper ter Kuile is helping to build a world of joyful belonging. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, Casper connects people and co-creates projects that help us live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. Nothing makes him happier than learning from religious tradition and reimagining it for our context. Casper holds Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and remains a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. He co-hosts the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and is the co-founder of activist-training program Campaign Bootcamp. His book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) will be published in the summer of 2020. He lives with his husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.

Today I share my conversation with Ron J Williams. Fast Company rated him in the top 100 most creative people in business...back in 2012! He's started some serious ventures - SnapGoods was an early vanguard in the sharing economy - and he's also helped companies large and small get proof (rather than stay in conjecture) on their business ideas with his consultancy ProofLabs. He's currently working as SVP & Head of Program Strategy at Citi Ventures. We also went to High School together, which is why he still takes my calls! I brought Ron onto the show because of a conversation we had months back about how businesses ARE conversations - that they can't just extract value from people without listening, adapting and relating to the people they serve. Ron offered the idea that each moment, each pixel, is an opportunity for a company to listen and to respond thoughtfully to their customers...this level of granularity and specificity in the opportunities for conversations between business and customers really lit me up. Ron also happens to be a black man. This episode is coming months after we recorded it - I'm working through a backlog - and you'll hear, at the end, my gratitude to Ron for bringing up the topic of racial inequality in corporate innovation...and the costs it has for our society as a whole. I did not want to commit the sin of making a person of color speak for "their people"...it's a burden that "non-minorities" don't have to endure. I am rarely, if ever, asked to speak for all white men, as if I could. Diversity is so important. Innovation isn't just a conversation between a company and its customers...it's also an internal company conversation. And who is in that innovation conversation determines what problems get noticed, which ideas get funded and for how long. With a large majority of white male voices in corporate innovation and silicon valley, the problems that get addressed and resolved are the problems of a very small, very privileged group of people. Ron says towards the end of our conversation, and I'm condensing a bit: "it's amazing to see many more people popping on the scene, both as people of color, women, LGBT...we're capitalizing networks...and empower(ing) more folks...when there are more voices in the virtual conversation of innovation, more lived experiences means more problem sets that maybe you and I wouldn't think to tackle, come up with... if they were networked properly, resourced properly, supported properly, would build something huge" I hope more diverse voices get included into the innovation conversation. What can you do at your organization to help make that happen? Enjoy the episode. Ron is fun to talk to and really fun to listen to! Support the Podcast and get insider access Links and Resources https://www.prooflabsgroup.com/ Jason Cyr on Designing the Organizational Conversation: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/11/15/designing-the-organizational-conversation More About Ron Proven innovation leader and entrepreneur building mission-driven teams focused on solving hard problems. Bringing together 15+ years of entrepreneurship, corporate strategy, startup advisory and product leadership, I have a unique perspective and an awesome network filled with doers. I center my teams on the principle of customer obsession. I believe that sustainable growth comes from better understanding of and partnership with the customer. Quick background: I've founded, built, invested in and advised on peer-to-peer, sharing economy, marketplace, machine learning and social commerce companies. In varied roles as a founder, intrapreneur, consultant, Entrepreneur in Residence and Program Lead, I've helped Fortune 500 companies re-engineer core business strategies and innovation programs across industries. Passion: Working with smart people to solve problems that matter (one reason I sit on the Board of organizations like BUILD.org) General approach to creating impact: - Long-term shareholder value follows customer obsession (not the other way around) - Values and value creation go hand-in-hand - Diverse perspective is an organizational super power. It is not a box to check - Cultivating a culture of trust and willingness to take risks is a competitive advantage - The "why" is almost always more important than the "what" - Mission and culture beat innovation theater every time Full Transcript on the Conversation Factory

Today I talk to Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former Chief People Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation and currently part of the faculty for the Leadership programs at the Full Circle Group. Together, we unpack the ideas of Conversational Leadership. In a conversation, there are usually at least two points of view, and movement forward comes through a give and take. The world asks things of us, and we ask things of the world...what we get is the conversation that is our lives. We can demand all we like of the world, we will get what we get. And just the same, the world will never get all it asks of us - we get to choose. Leadership in organizations is absolutely accomplished through dialogue - leading through dictatorial fiat is not a sustainable model. That old mode of command and control is losing its hold on the world. Gayle presents us with this idea of leadership as sensing and steering - of getting data and feedback from the world and "turning up the volume on what works". Feedback loops are the essence of conversation and leadership. The image brought to mind my episode with Aaron Dignan, founder of the Ready who asks leaders if they would like to ride a bicycle where they get to steer or one with a fixed steering wheel - you can only point the bike in one direction and keep going. Everyone always chooses the steering bike, the ability to make little corrections to your course, rather than stay in a line….and yet most organizations are led like a fixed bike, with an annual budgeting and strategy process that isn't conversational or adaptable mid-course. In terms of the Conversation Operating System at the core of my book, this is about Cadence - having a lively pace of feedback, rather than a slow or non-existent one. Gayle and I also dive into the importance of Narrative in leadership. Data is critical, but data, in the end, doesn't tell us anything. We tell stories with data. There are at least two ways to shift a story - one is with new data and the other is with a new story. And for this, Poetry is a surprising tool. Poetry can give us new words, the seeds for a new story. My interview with Nancy McGaw from the Aspen Institute is another conversation to juxtapose here - she talks about poetry as a profoundly simple way to start a group conversation with depth. Gayle offers that: Poetry helps me tap into a deeper well, helps me get grounded so that when I go on with my day, I'm much more able to be responsive and not reactive. Gayle reads us one of her husband's poems, Mameen, which I'll place in the notes for you to read along with. (It might help to mention that Gayle's husband is the rather famous poet David Whyte!) Gayle also helps us understand how to unpack poems with groups and help the words go deeper - starting with a story about why it's significant to you or allowing people to choose a line that resonated most with them and to share it with another person. Leaders need to be intentional in how they communicate with the world...and that's work, to design all of those conversations. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and you use it to deepen your leadership. Mameen Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith among the rocks where the mist parts slowly. Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed by circumstance, how great reputations dissolve with infirmity and how you, in particular, stand a hairsbreadth from losing everyone you hold dear. Then, look back down the path to the north, the way you came, as if seeing your entire past and then south over the hazy blue coast as if present to a broad future. Recall the way you are all possibilities you can see and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons whether you reach them or not. Admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door, once you have walked out into the clean air toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary you have become the privileged and the pilgrim, the one who will tell the story and the one, coming back from the mountain who helped to make it Links and Resources More about Gayle on the Web The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity by Jennifer Garvey Berger Nancy McGaw on the Conversation Factory on Leading Through Asking Naomi Shihab Nye on Kindness: https://poets.org/poem/kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he t

Finding an opening quote from my conversation with Ayse Birsel – One of Fast Company magazine's 'World's Top 15 Designers' and author of Design the Life You Love was a challenge, mostly because I delighted in re-listening to each moment of it. In this opening quote, Ayse is talking about the joys of having a process that guides her in her design journey. Her wonderful book, Design the Life you Love is not self-help BS...it's a visual thinking masterpiece and a guide to one of the most powerful and simply stated design processes I've ever seen….and I've seen and made a lot of them. The double diamond of design thinking was my first design process, the first map to creativity that I followed, and it helped me design entire work engagements, hour-long meetings and multi-day workshops. But underneath that framework is a deeper one: Ayse's De:Re map. De:Re stands for deconstruction and reconstruction, and this idea is essential if you're going to design anything well. In the context of designing conversations, meetings and workshops, the key question is: What are the parts that you can see? If you can't see the parts, you can't shape them. That's why we love frameworks...they help us know what to look for! The idea of deconstruction is controversial in some spaces. It made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts... Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts—something is always created too. -Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance What is created through deconstruction is the opportunity to reconstruct something new. Ayse asks us to apply this framework, methodically, to our lives, so that we can build our biggest design project, our lives, according to principles we can (literally) live with. What's truly delightful about Ayse's perspective is that many people still assume that design is for the few - designers. And that designers are akin to artists, disheveled and mysterious and creative. And that creativity is more magic than method. Watch Ayse's TEDx talk, read her book, and you'll see...design is for everyone. The question is...when you look at a problem, what do you see? A messy mass? Or do you start to deconstruct the challenge into its parts? This is true of a workshop or meeting or a conversation...what are the parts? Who are the players? What are the goals and constraints? Once you start deconstructing...you can start reconstructing a new configuration and a process to get there. I could go on, but I don't want to keep you from enjoying this conversation any longer! Full Transcript here Links and Resources Ayse on the web Design the life you love: The book Ayshe's Inc Column About Ayshe Ayse (pronounced Eye-Shay) Birsel is one of Fast Company's Most Creative People 2017. She is the author of Design the Life You Love, A Step-By-Step Guide to Building A Meaningful Future. On the Thinkers50 shortlist for talent, she gives lectures on Design the Organization You Love to corporations. Ayse writes a weekly post on innovation for Inc.com. Ayse designs award-winning products and systems with Fortune 100 and 500 companies, including Amazon, Colgate-Palmolive, Herman Miller, GE, IKEA, The Scan Foundation, Staples and Toyota. She is the recipient of numerous awards including Interior Design Best of Year Award in 2018 for Overlay, a new Herman Miller system, multiple IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Awards) and Best of NeoCon Gold Awards, Young Designers Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Athena Award for Excellence in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. Ayse is one of only 100 people worldwide to be named as one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches—a program Goldsmith conceived during Ayse's Design the Life You Love program—along with the President of the World Bank, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and the President of Singularity University. She is a TEDx speaker. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the MoMA, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Born in Izmir, Turkey, Ayse came to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship and got her masters degree at Pratt Institute, New York.

On today's episode, I talk with Cameron Yarbrough, the Co-founder of Torch, a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and prior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve Huffman, Founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator Gary Tan, and a bunch of other well known startup founders. full transcript is at: theconversationfactory.com/podcast/scaling-leadership-development Cameron offers some deep insight on how to step up as a leader and as a coach of leaders. We also dive into the challenges of designing a product for multiple customers and needs - his platform, Torch.io is designed for Learning and Development leaders to set up programs, and also for coaches and coachees to have a streamlined experience...all while working to deliver insight on the ROI of coaching - both top line and bottom line impacts on the business - spoiler alert - it's a hard thing to do, but worth it. Why? We close the interview with a Carl Jung Quote: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Cameron offers: "To me, this is a perfect reflection on what it means to really look at your blind spots. If you do not look at your blind spots, if you do not do the painful hard work of bringing in, bringing attention to your blind spots, those blind spots are going to run your life and you're going to call it fate." That is what having a coach can do for a leader, and what a facilitator can do for a team, to be sure. Cameron also shares his insights from his experiences in Zen philosophy and Psychology and puts much of modern facilitation practice in a larger context and history from T-Groups at MIT in the 1960s to Stanford's Graduate School of Business' Interpersonal Dynamics course today. Torch on the internet: torch.io Twitter at @torchlabs Cameron on twitter @yarbroughcam The johari window The Peter Principle On users, customers and power: Chelsea Mauldin, Executive Director, Public Policy Lab IXDA 2017 Keynote: Design and Power: https://vimeo.com/204547107 (ff to 7:00min for the "good part" T-Groups The Ladder of Inference Stanford GSB Interpersonal Dynamics Course About Cameron Cameron Yarbrough is the Co-founder of Torch, a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and prior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve Huffman, Founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator Gary Tan, and a bunch of other well known startup founders. This is how Torch was created- Cameron wanted to create a streamlined process integrating a tech platform and real leadership coaching for executive level employees and founders. Check out this article to learn more about Cameron: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/breaking-into-startups-torch-ceo-and-well-clinic-founder-cameron-yarbrough-on-mental-health-coaching/ Enjoy the conversation.

full transcript and show notes at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2020/a-game-changing-solution-to-gender-inequality Eve Rodsky is working to change society one marriage at a time with a new 21st century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering the brunt of childrearing and domestic life responsibilities regardless of whether they work outside the home. In her New York Times bestselling book Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live), she uses her Harvard Law School training and years of organizational management experience to create a gamified life-management system to help couples rebalance all of the work it takes to run a home and allow them to reimagine their relationship, time and purpose. Eve Rodsky received her B.A. in economics and anthropology from the University of Michigan, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. After working in foundation management at J.P. Morgan, she founded the Philanthropy Advisory Group to advise high-net worth families and charitable foundations on best practices for harmonious operations, governance and disposition of funds. In her work with hundreds of families over a decade, she realized that her expertise in family mediation, strategy, and organizational management could be applied to a problem closer to home – a system for couples seeking balance, efficiency, and peace in their home. Rodsky was born and raised by a single mom in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Seth and their three children.

Today I'm sharing an interview with self-described On-Air Personality on SiriusXM and Idiot Grand Random. Grant has had a long-time career in radio: In college he was hired to board op Christmas music for WLS-FM in Chicago when it was transitioning from Talk to Country music. He was at the controls the day the station flipped to "Kicks Country," which was really cool in a geeky radio kind of way. He now hosts on SirusXM's Octane channel. Grant has interviewed some big names: from Billy Corgan to Marilyn Manson and many, many in between so as I transition the show into its fourth season, I thought it would be awesome to sit down with someone who interviews people for a living! We all need to get amazing information from people at work and in life...and doing it in a way that makes people feel comfortable and excited to share that information is a tremendous skill. So even if you don't work for a radio company, I suspect you'll find some gems in here...or at the very least enjoy Grant's sparkling personality. Grant was kind enough to host me at Sirus XM's amazing studios in Midtown Manhattan and share some insights on how to interview people like a rockstar. Spoiler alert: Ask interesting questions, prepare...and do it, a lot! Enjoy the conversation... Show Links Grant Random on the Web: https://twitter.com/grantrandom https://www.instagram.com/grantrandom/ Grant and Marilyn Manson text Justin Beiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbAwXgPphw Daniel's Conversation OS Canvas: https://theconversationfactory.com/downloads Full transcription at https://theconversationfactory.com/episodes-all

Today I share my deeply lovely conversation with the amazing Esther Derby, Author, Coach and author of, most recently, 7 Rules for Positive Product Change. Esther started her career as a programmer, and has worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant and manager. From all these perspectives, one thing became clear: our level of individual, team and company success was deeply impacted by our work environment and organizational dynamics. As a result, she has spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success. She's a founder of the AYE Conference, and is serving her second term as a member of the Board of Directors for the Agile Alliance. She also was one of the three original founders of the Scrum Alliance. Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership and a certificate in Human System Dynamics. We discuss Systems thinking in problem solving, Clock time vs Human time, the power of invitation, Ritual vs Ritualistic thinking and how forests are a better metaphor for change than installing a new OS. Enjoy the conversation! Show Links Esther Derby on the web https://www.estherderby.com/ 7 Rules for Positive Productive Change: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Positive-Productive-Change-Results/dp/1523085797 Back when it was 6 rules! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDyoUdVHwbg Kairos vs Chronos: Clock time vs living time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos Forest Succession as a metaphor for change: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/community-structure-and-diversity/a/ecological-succession "People are easy to see. People are easy to blame. Systems are hard to see and you can't blame systems." The Laws of Open Space: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology Ritual vs Ritualized: The Power of Ritual to create a safe container Esther on Retrospectives: https://www.estherderby.com/seven-ways-to-revitalize-your-sprint-retrospectives/ https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649 How to facilitate Safety: "I have people fill-in-the-blank in two different index cards. And the first index card says, "When I don't feel safe, I fill-in-the-blank," and then I collect all those, and I have them do another index card that says, "When I feel safe, I..." They fill-in-the-blank and I collect those, and I shuffle them all up, and then I read all the ones about, "When I don't feel safe, I..." Sometimes I hand them out to people in the room, just at random and they read them. Then I have people read the ones about, "When I feel safe..." Then I say, "What do we need to do at this time, in this meeting, so we can live into this?" The Use of Self in Change: "The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor" – Bill O'Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance Radical Participatory Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_democracy Virginia Satir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Satir

Influence and Leadership aren't things you turn on and off...it's a muscle you have to practice all the time. And while being "on" all the time might sound exhausting, Stacey Hanke, my guest today, suggests that the key to leadership is being consistent. Leadership and influence is something you practice "monday to monday" and every day in between. Stacey is the author of Influence Redefined and Yes You Can! … Everything You Need From A to Z to Influence Others to Take Action. Her company exists to equip leaders within organizations to communicate with confidence, presence and authenticity, day in and day out. One thing I really heard from Stacey is that in order to grow it's critical to see ourselves from the outside. That can mean recording yourself speaking or presenting or it can mean having a coach or trusted advisor who can give you honest feedback - and that you have to prepare for that feedback. If you want to dive into how to develop a culture of critique and feedback about your work, check out the show notes for my interview with Aaron Irizarry and Adam Connor, authors of "Discussing Design". One of my favorite questions in this episode came from Jordan Hirsch, who was in the most recent cohort of my 12-week Innovation Leadership Accelerator: How do you lead from the middle, without formal authority? Stacey had some solid, down-to-earth advice: Don't waste anyone's time - be brief and clear in your communication Have your message clear and crystallized so you can speak to it without notes Be clear on how you want to be perceived and how you are currently perceived Deliver value, consistently Show up for others - listening deeply means you can respond deeply If you want to connect with a community of innovation leaders keen on growing in their authentic presence, you should apply to the upcoming cohort at ILAprogram.com One other fine point I want to pull out from this interview is how influence shifts depending on the size of the conversation you're holding space in. 1-to-1 : It's easy to adapt and influence one to one: Stacey suggests that we listen deeply and get our conversation partners to do most of the talking. Also, mirroring their body language can create connection as well. Groups - if it's more than five people Stacey's rule is to get on your feet. You'll have more energy and the group will feed off of that. Large Groups - be "bigger" - use more of your voice, and use the whole stage. Connect to the whole room, purposefully, with your eyes One side note: I misquote one of Newton's Laws. The Third law is about how every action creates an equal and opposite reaction, not the second law! How embarrassing! Check out the show notes for how to find Stacey and her work on the web as well as links we mentioned in our conversation. Show Links https://staceyhankeinc.com/ The trusted advisor Ed Sheeran on giving up his phone: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ed-sheeran-doesnt-have-cell-phone Deep Listening on Ian Altman's Podcast: https://www.ianaltman.com/salespodcast/deep-listening-impact-beyond-words-oscar-trimboli/ Developing a culture of critique: Designing a Culture of Critique http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/9/2/culture-of-critique

Today's conversation with Dorie Clark taught me some essential lessons about how to build a following around one's ideas - which is no surprise - Dorie has given several excellent TEDx talks on just this topic, and I'll summarize my insights from our conversation in a moment. I learned something more surprising during my conversation with Dorie - that she is living her principles, constantly. I also learned that she's into musicals, big time. I wasn't expecting to learn this about Dorie, but I followed the conversation, as you'll see. Dorie is the author of a trilogy of books all about reinvention. Starting in 2013, Dorie wrote "Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future" which she followed up in 2015 with "Stand Out: How to Find your Breakthrough Idea and build a following around it" which was named Inc Magazine's #1 Leadership book of that year. Most recently, in 2017, she penned "Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive." Maybe I'm just a cynic, but I often expect people who have this much time to write about their ideas to have less time to apply them. Dorie walks her talk, however. The opening quote is about Dorie's dream to learn to write and produce musical theater...and how she's going about it - slowly building skills, insights and networks, long before she plans to tap them. If you take nothing else away from this episode, that alone is a solid gold lesson. This approach makes logical sense - you have to plant before you can reap - and networks are no different. What I loved learning about Dorie is that she's not sitting still - she still has dreams of constant reinvention and she's working to make those dreams possible, steadily. In the last several years in hosting this podcast, I've come to see conversations in a new light - sometimes they can seem like a wave, building, cresting and receding. Dorie certainly treats her own musical reinvention in this way - like a conversational wave she needs to build. But I've also learned that conversations also have key sizes that act differently - small, medium and large conversations are all essential to master, as a leader or facilitator, and with reinvention, this is still true. Dorie takes me through three key conversational size "phase transitions" in building a following around a breakthrough idea. You don't get to massive impact overnight. Zero to one: Start talking about your idea. It may seem obvious, but many people just keep their ideas and their dreams in their heads. Getting it out of your head is like Peter Thiel's Zero-to-One innovation and gets the ball rolling. One to Many: Finding ways to get to talk to many people about your ideas at once, like writing for a publication or speaking to a group. Many-to-Many: The goal, at the end of the day, is to develop a many-to-many conversation. You don't want to be the only person talking about your idea. For me, the more people who see conversations as something worth designing, the better it is for me and for the world (at least, that's how I see it) - which is why I keep making this show! This episode is full of other insights, like how to write a great headline or choose a collaborator for a project. For the show notes and links to Dorie's books and videos, click over to the Conversation Factory.com Show Links Dorie Clark on the Web https://dorieclark.com/ How to Build a Following Around your Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fQ92UVoXqc Zero to One innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

Questions need silence. Great questions are provocative. Great questions defy easy answers. Answering them takes time - they can be the work of a lifetime or a workshop. A great question can guide an organization, a Design Sprint or an educational program. Great Facilitators ask great questions - on purpose. In this episode I sit down with the effortlessly scintillating Nancy McGaw, Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program (Aspen BSP). Nancy also leads corporate programs designed to cultivate leaders and achieve Aspen BSP's mission of aligning business with the long-term health of society. In 2009 she founded (and still directs) the First Movers Fellowship Program, an innovation lab for exceptional business professionals who have demonstrated an ability and passion for imagining new products, services, and management practices that achieve profitable business growth and lasting, positive social impacts. I would suggest you listen to this episode at 1X speed if for no other reason than it's good to slow down sometimes - it's a point that Nancy makes early on in our conversation. Nancy and I meditate on the power of questions: Asking instead of telling lights people up and will surprise you, the asker, if you design your questions with care. Nancy shares three of her favorite questions. Tell me about a time when you were working at your best…? What would have to be true…? Why do you do the work you do? Starting with Stories The first question shows the power of Starting with stories. Any user experience researchers or Design Thinkers listening will know this to be true - if you're talking to a customer or a client, the best way to get rich and detailed information is to ask a "tell me about a time when…" question. Stories light up our brains in ways facts cannot, and starting our gatherings with a story is a luxurious and powerful way to generate energy and connectedness. Appreciative Inquiry This first question also connects to one of the most important ideas in this episode - even though it's mentioned only briefly: Asking with focus on the positive and the functional over the negative and dysfunctional. Appreciative Inquiry is a rich body of work and a unique approach to change. The Art of Possibility Nancy's second question is an excellent act of conversational Judo. Asking "What would have to be true…" can transform conflict into collaboration...or at least, honest inquiry. Asking this question can allow skeptics to dream a little and open the door into possibility. That question came out of another question, from Michael Robertson, who attended the recent cohort of my 12 week Innovation Leadership Accelerator. He wanted to know if an "us vs them" mentality is ever appropriate when trying to lead deeply important change. Nancy's answer is profoundly empathetic. As a side note, the next cohort of the ILA is in February - we're accepting applications through January. If you want to dive more deeply into your own personal leadership, head over to ILAprogram.com to learn more and apply. Why over what I love the idea of asking people "Why do you do what you do?" without even knowing what they do. This question also points to understanding people's history, which is one of the key components to change - how did we get to now? What was the arc of the story? Nancy has added some amazing books to my reading list - check out the show notes for links to them all and enjoy the episode! Nancy at the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program First Movers Fellowship Program Edgar Schein's Humble Inquiry The Four Quadrants of Conversational Leadership Appreciative Inquiry John McPhee's Draft No. 4 The Four Truths of Storytelling Carmine Gallo's Storytelling Secrets Rosamund and Ben Zander's Art of Possibility Leading change with and without a Burning Platform Hal Gregersen's Questions are the Answer Elise Foster's The Multiplier Effect Full Transcription at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/12/24/leading-through-asking

Daniel Stillman Interviews Ian Altman I am so thrilled to share this conversation with author and speaker Ian Altman about a conversation we all have to contend with one way or another - sales! Everyone sells something at some point, whether it's in a job interview or a client presentation...and at some point everyone is going to be sold to. Ian's book, Same Side Selling, asks "Are you tired of playing the sales game?" The most widely used metaphors in sales are those related to sports, battle, or games. The challenge with this mindset is that it means one person wins, and the other loses. Instead of falling victim to a win-lose approach, what if you shared a common goal with your potential client? How might things change if the client felt that you were more committed to their success than making the sale? As Ian says in the opening quote - it's not about a series of tactics, it's about selling something you care about that helps people solve real challenges that you also care about! I wanted to share my own takeaways form Ian's approach that have helped me facilitate deeper conversations with my clients and potential clients. Stay in the problem space slightly longer than feels comfortable. My listeners with Design Thinking experience will not be too surprised to hear that jumping from problem to solution quickly is not any more effective in sales conversations than it is in innovation conversations. Staying in the problem space means listening longer and more deeply to people before you share your amazing solution to all their worries. Ian's "same side quadrant" notebook has actually been a helpful reminder to do just that. Ask "what's the cost of not solving this challenge?" Make sure you understand not just the problem today, but the cost of not solving the problem in the near future. This conversation can help you both understand how to measure the impact of any effort you make to solve the problem. The Cost of your solution is often irrelevant in the face of the cost of the problem. Once you really know the cost of the problem, talking about your fees can feel less challenging. What is particularly interesting me to are the wider implications of Ian's metaphor driven-approach. What metaphors are driving the key relationships in your life? Those metaphors are narrative threads that link (and color) each and every moment of the relationship. The simple shift from a game to be won to a puzzle to be solved is a profound one. If you think of your marriage as a battle or your job as circus, the way you name the game will affect how you play it. I'm really grateful to Ian for this new metaphor - and I think you'll enjoy it too! Ian's Same Side Sales Podcat: https://www.ianaltman.com/same-side-selling-podcast/ Your Chocolate is in my peanut butter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLDF6qZUX Same Side Sales Journal: https://www.ianaltman.com/store/Journal/ Full Transcription at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/12/04/what-is-your-sales-metaphor

Today we are talking to my friend and client Jason Cyr, Director of Design Transformation at Cisco. We have a wild and rambling conversation about designing conversations on at least three scales: as a facilitator of workshop experiences, a designer of design processes and as a leader of a transformation effort in a larger organization. Like anything else, conversations can be designed with a goal in mind: speed, effectiveness, clarity, joy. How do you intend to proceed towards your goal? The very first story that Jason tells us shows how knowing your conversational goal is key: Jason tells us about his Uncle Rowley and how Jason's mother pointed out the ways in which Uncle Rowley was as talented conversation designer. It seemed like he designed his conversations with an overarching purpose, regardless of the objective of any individual conversation. His purpose, his higher goal was to make people feel good. Did he do it in order to be successful, or was that an outcome of his purpose? Sadly, we can't ask him...but there was clearly an aspect of his way of being that enraptured Jason as a boy - he wanted to be like him. As an aside: One of my favorite topics in conversation dynamics is about how power shows up...the type of power Uncle Rowley exerted over young Jason is called Referent Power - the power of charisma. Jason is now responsible for designing a much bigger conversation at Cisco - how teams work together and how teams of teams communicate and collaborate. One key way he's doing that is through enabling his organization to apply the tools of Design Thinking to their internal and external challenges. What my conversation with Jason highlights, is that this conversation takes a long time....the cadence of transformation is not the quick rat-a-tat-tat of a stand-up meeting. It's a steady drumbeat of regular workshops and consistent follow-through. It's a healthy reminder that change takes consistency, clarity...and time. Jason has a simple three step transformation process that he shares: Start with the Coalition of the Willing Make more evangelists Craft stories that share themselves How does Jason pull people into that conversation? It seems like he uses the same skills he learned from his Uncle - making them feel good, like they are part of a bigger narrative arc - a growing capability and practice inside the organization, one that can and does deliver value to the organization...even if it takes 6-9 months into the effort. This is charismatic power on an organizational scale. People want to be part of a positive story. How does Cisco design the design thinking conversation? Jason shares four principles of Design Thinking at Cisco and they are so delightfully on point that I wanted to repeat them here: Empathy. We are always designing for someone else's benefit. Somebody else is going to consume the thing or the thinking or the product that you're making. Do your best to understand that person so that you can build something desirable for them. Go wide before going narrow, whether you're trying to choose a problem to solve or whether you're trying to find a solution to that problem, explore a little bit before making a decision. Try and reframe that problem and dig into that problem before tackling it. Try to generate multiple solutions before picking one. And it doesn't have to be a lot of work. Experimentation. As soon as you think you have a good idea, how quickly can you figure out what's wrong with that idea? We do that by experimenting, putting it in front of people, having them react to it. Diversity. Be thoughtful about who you bring into the conversation around the problems that you're solving. Make sure you have the appropriate definition of diversity and make people of all genders and colors feel welcome. Jason also asks: are we including the right people from across the organization, ie, engineering and product or design? Maybe we should be including sales. Maybe we should be including other parts of the business. I'm so grateful Jason took some time to sit down with me and share some insights on how to lead a design transformation in an organization and keep the conversation on track, moving towards it's ongoing goal...I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Also, be sure to check out the episode Jason referenced, where I interviewed Jocelyn Ling from UNICEF's Innovation team on Disciplined Imagination. Referent Power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent_power (one of my favorite types of power!) The six types of power https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/six-types-power-leaders-john-prescott/ Jocelyn Ling's episode on Disciplined Imagination https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/8/27/disciplined-imagination-with-jocelyn-ling 10 types of innovation: https://doblin.com/ten-types The book: https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Types-Innovation-Discipline-Breakthroughs/dp/1118504240 All process is the same https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-desi

Hey there Conversation Designers! Today I'm talking with Author, speaker and advisor Greg Satell about going beyond innovation to driving transformation. His recent book, Cascades, is about how to create a movement that drives real change and he's teaching a workshop in Austin November 21st with my friend and podcast guest Douglas Furgueson. Greg is also the author of Mapping Innovation, which was all about stepping back from a monolithic idea of innovation and turning it into a conversation - what do we mean when we say innovation? And by we, I mean whoever is coming together to make a change. A team, an organization, has to define for itself what change and impact means to them. And this is the essence of the conversation Greg and I had - the importance of empathy across the board - not just with customers but with your internal stakeholders. It's only through this kind of "mass empathy" that we, as change agents, can begin to find the shared values that will power change. While we didn't use these terms in the interview, the act of empathy and seeking shared values means you can shift your transformation from a "push" effort to a "pull" effort - in other words, leveraging Invitation rather than Imposition. The core of any productive conversation, of any communication is invitation: the choice of all the participants to actually choose to participate. There is one other idea I want to explore and that is making problems okay to talk about inside of a culture. In many of the transformation cascades Greg talked about in this episode, broad silence about a challenge was followed by everyone pulling in the same direction. What changed? Some suggest that change only happens when we all feel like we're on a burning platform, a phrase coined by John Kotter in the late 90s. But Greg is talking about change being driven by shared values, not just fear and panic. What seems to be happening in each of these instances is that stakeholder groups who initially thought that they had different goals and values suddenly saw a shared goal and shared set of values.The burning platform just makes the act of finding shared values easy - the need to focus on survival is a powerful motivator. But understanding that the fear is just one type of motivation is clarifying. This makes the job of a leader of change simple - or rather, one of simplification. Change is about making the choice simple - simple to see (through storytelling) and simple to make (through clear shared values). You can learn more about Greg's work (including seeing the entire eight-step cascades process) and the upcoming workshop in Austin @ GregSatell.com Enjoy the conversation! full transcript and show notes can be found at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/10/28/from-innovation-to-transformation

Have you ever found a framework, a diagram, that perfectly summarized an important and subtle idea? That somehow made that important idea concrete and easy to talk about? That's why I'm really excited to share today's conversation with Emily Levada, Director of Product Management at Wayfair. We'll dive into a Trust/Communication Map that, as a manager of a huge team, helps her navigate an essential question - is our team talking too much or not enough? On the conversation design, meta side, I want to point out this important idea: The power of a visual to focus and shift a conversation. All conversations have an interface - either the air, a chat window or a whiteboard - a *place* the conversation actually happens. A diagram creates a narrative space for a much more clear and focused conversation to take place - the diagram triangulates all of our individual inputs and ideas. I stumbled across Emily's medium article where she breaks down this trust/communication trade off using this simple visual map. She points out that the map we talk about is commonly attributed to technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. In his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things he writes, "If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know that whatever you are doing is in my best interests." With Communication on the Y axis and Trust on the X, you clearly don't want your team in the lower-left quadrant - low trust and low communication. Things will get pretty rocky there, fast. Increasing communication can help, but wow, will your team get burnt out, fast. The upper right quadrant, from a manager's perspective, is waste - in this region, we're having too many meetings. We can likely decrease communication, slowly, until we find a perfect balance - low friction, high trust teams. Emily, at the end of the episode outlines how she uses this diagram to have this crucial conversation with the teams she manages: Where does each member of the team feel we are on this chart? Are we spending too much time talking or not enough? If you use this diagram with your team, please let me know! Email me at [email protected] As Emily points out, when there's total trust, there's a sense of safety - When my collaborators trust me to make things work, I feel empowered to find my own way, even if I take the long path, down some blind alleys. Psychological safety is at the absolute core of teams that can make great things happen. We need trust and safety to make good decisions. Amy Edmonson, who coined the term Psychological safety, opens her book "The Fearless organization" with this amazing quote from Edmund Burke, an English philosopher from the mid-1700s "No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." With the right balance of trust and communication, teams can feel safe to act, learn and iterate. For all of this and a lot more, listen to the rest of the episode! Show Links The Trust/Communication Curve https://medium.com/@elevada/the-trust-communication-trade-off-4238993e2da4 Agile at a large experience design organization https://medium.com/wayfair-design/the-agile-methodology-of-a-large-experience-design-organization-178eccbb73c8 The Agile manifesto https://agilemanifesto.org/ The Five Elements of User Experience from Jesse James Garrett http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf Minimum Viable vs Minimum Lovable Products https://themindstudios.com/blog/mlp-vs-mvp-vs-mmp/ Making Time in the Morning https://www.jeffsanders.com/the-5-am-miracle-podcast/ Project Aristotle and Psychological Safety https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/ Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247 The Learning Zone https://hackernoon.com/great-teams-5f15cb718c20 The Trust Equation from the Trusted Advisor https://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation High CUA Organizations, from High Output Management by Andy Grove https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884/ Helpful summary is here: https://charles.io/high-output-management/ Full Transcription Daniel: Emily, we're going to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Thank you for making the time to do this and for waiting for me while I fixed all of my technical difficulties. Emily: Thank you for having me. Daniel: Awesome. so you can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what your role is? Emily: I can start. Sure, sure. I'm a director of product management at Wayfair. I own a set of technologies that sit at what we call the bottom of our purchase funnel. So when you're shopping on Wayfair, that's the product detail page, the page that tells you about the things we sell, ah, they cart and checkout experiences. And then some other things like customer review

Today's conversation is with my dear friend Jocelyn Ling, a tremendously talented Business Model Specialist in the Office of Innovation at Unicef. She's currently on sabbatical from the Organizational Innovation consultancy Incandescent. She's been an interim biotech CEO, an investment consultant at the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank Group, and even an instructor at Stanford's DSchool. The Show Notes section of this episode are pretty epic, since Jocelyn dropped a lot of knowledge and wisdom on me and you - frameworks aplenty for you to get a handle on designing the innovation conversation and leading the process, with, as she says, healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination. I wanted to give that Hubble quote it's full space to breathe, because it's so lovely...I'm going to read it in full here: The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination. — Edwin Powell Hubble There are a few subtle points that I want to tease out and draw your attention to as this all relates to conversation design and shaping them for the better. Invitation Jocelyn highlights one of my favorite ideas in conversation design - invitation. A leader invites participation through their own openness, not through force. Anyone can lead that openness to new ideas, even if they're not an "authorized" leader, through their own example. Invitations can look like asking the right questions or hosting teams or creating physical or mental space for the conversation. Cadence Jocelyn talks about the tempo of a team or an organization, and these larger conversions do have a tempo, just like a 1-on-1 conversation does. Leading the innovation conversation often means slowing down or speeding up that tempo to create clarity and safety or progress and speed. Goals Conversations start when people have a goal in mind. Each participant in the conversation will have their own idea of what that goal is and the innovation conversation is no different. Jocelyn points out, rightly, that it's critical for a team or an organization to develop their own clear, shared definition of innovation. I did a webinar recently with Mural and my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, on just this topic, and you can find a link to the templates we used in the show notes...I think you'll find those helpful, too. Narrative Storytelling and coherent narratives are core components of everyday conversations and the innovation conversation is no different. What Jocelyn asks us to focus on is the idea of stories as memes - what happens to your story after you tell it? Does it communicate or convince? Great. Does that person retell that story and evangelize it for you? That's even better. Leading change means being able to tell the second type of story - viral anecdotes. That's all for now. The full transcript and show notes are right there in your podcasting app and on the website. Show Links and Notes Jocelyn Ling on the Internet http://jocelynling.com/ Making a Team Charter if you want a template (or just have the conversation!) https://blog.mural.co/team-charter https://www.unicef.org/innovation/ http://www.incandescent.com/ Michelle Gelfand's Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire our World https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Tight-Cultures/dp/1501152939 All in the Mind Podcast: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-power-of-social-norms/11178124 Clayton Christensen, Disruptive Innovation http://claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/ Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380 A blinkist version https://medium.com/key-lessons-from-books/the-key-lessons-from-where-good-ideas-come-from-by-steven-johnson-1798e11becdb Square Pegs and Round Holes in Apollo 13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry55--J4_VQ Google vs Apple in One Image, their patents map https://www.fastcompany.com/3068474/the-real-difference-between-google-and-apple Edwin Hubble Quote: The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination. — Edwin Powell Hubble In Commencement Address, California Institute of Technology 10 Jun 1938 More on Hubble: https://www.spacetelescope.org/about/history/the_man_behind_the_name/ The Innovation/Ambition Matrix Core, Adjacent, Transformational How to have the Innovation Conversation: https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership The 21st Century Ger Project: https://www.forbes.com/sites/unicefusa/2018/

Innovation. We love to talk about it, everyone wants it. Innovation is critical for people and organizations to grow. But we all mean different things when we say it. Today I have a conversation about how innovation is a conversation with Brian Ardinger. He's the director of Innovation at Nenet (which owns my student debt! Hi Nelnet!) and the host of InsideOutside.io, a community for innovators and entrepreneurs that produces a great podcast and a conference that brings together startup and enterprise organizations to talk innovation. There are three key conversations worth designing that we discuss and I want you to have your ears perked up for each as you listen to this episode. Each conversation can help you navigate the innovation process inside or outside your organization. These three are the pre-conversation, the conversation about where to look for innovation and the conversation about patience. Brian specializes in a unique perspective on where to look for innovation. More on that in a moment. The Pre-Innovation Conversation Before you even start to talk about ideas or technology, it's essential to start with the end in mind. What kind of innovation is the company really looking for? Skip the pre-conversation and you have no idea of where you're heading. As Brian points out "without having that definition, then it's sometimes hard to know if you're playing the right game to begin with...the process itself of level setting... I don't think it takes a long time." Brian and I didn't dive into tools to help with that conversation, so I put a few into the show notes. Mapping the innovation conversation can be done in lots of ways. One is thinking about evolutionary vs revolutionary change, another is about tangible vs intangible change, like rethinking policies or business models vs remaking product or space design. I *just* did a webinar on this topic with my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, hosted by the amazing people at Mural. Templates of the two innovation leadership frameworks we outlined are there in Mural for you to download and use, along with the webinar video to help you along. Also check out Mapping Innovation, by Greg Satell. You can download his playbook free in the show notes. Where to look for innovation Brian's Inside/outside perspective is that innovation can be a conversation between the inside of a company and the outside world. Some innovation will happen internally, and some innovation can be brought from the outside in: the exchange and acquisition of ideas and technology from outside your organization is an important conversation for enterprise organizations to be having. When you're trying to innovate, it can be tempting to look in familiar places. If you're a financial technology firm, it can be tempting to look to fintech startups for what's next and to try to innovate through acquisition. But you'll also be looking were your competitors will be looking. Try an innovation approach based on Horizontal Evolution - look to the sides and edges of the landscape. Brian describes this approach as "playing a different ball game". The conversation about patience Innovation does not happen overnight. Real change takes time and that takes real patience. Brian also points out that organizations need to be having a bigger conversation, about what else needs to change to make real innovation flourish inside the organization. Hint: it's generally more than you bargained for. As he says "Corporations are doing exactly what they should be doing...They figured out a business model that works and they're executing and optimizing that particular business model...And to radically change that, the people, the resources, the compensation, all of that stuff has to kind of morph or change to play in a different environment. And so I think that's where the challenge really begins." Often people think innovation is about the idea, but it's a much, much longer conversation. That is, in fact, the first "Myth of Innovation" from Scott Berkun's excellent book: The Myth that innovation is about an epiphany, not hard work. It was a real treat to have a conversation with Brian about some of these key issues...I hope you enjoy the episode and happy innovating! Brian on the Web: https://insideoutside.io/ https://twitter.com/ardinger https://www.nxxt.co/ Innovation Leadership Models from the Mural Webinar https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership Mapping Innovation by Greg Satell https://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook-Navigating-Disruptive/dp/1259862259 Download the Playbook for Free: https://www.gregsatell.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook.pdf Horizontal Evolution https://evolutionnews.org/2015/08/horizontal_gene/ An amazing summary from Scott Berkun about his solid book, Myths of Innovation: https://scottberkun.com/2013/ten-myths-of-innnovation/ A few more gems from Greg Satell on the Rules and questions central to innovation: https://medium.c

Hey there, conversation designers! Today I'm sharing a conversation with Larissa Conte, who I connected with last year at the Responsive Conference in New York. Larissa is a transformation designer, systems coach, and executive rites of passage guide through her business, Wayfinding. Larissa specializes in facilitating aliveness and alignment across organizational scales to cultivate power that serves. In her talk, she did a physical demonstration with the conference host Robin Zander that really inspired me to connect with her and have her on the show. (Also, you can check out my conversation with Robin on asking better questions here). She and Robin did a sort of "push hands" play to show how you can push back against a force coming at you, or let it flow past you while holding your center of gravity. It was a powerful physical metaphor for dynamics we have all experienced in our relationships and work and illustrates different choices we can take in these tense situations. Larissa and I have a far-ranging conversation about power, structure and ritual in our work as consultants in team and organizational transformation. I want to draw your attention to a few interesting ideas: Rituals can be designed. Teams run on rituals, day in and day out. Week by week, patterns are followed, usually without question. Re-designing those rituals takes time and consideration, but it's worth doing. Facilitators can use ritual to create comfort for themselves and others. There are lots of patterns and exercises I use to build safety or energy for myself and others. You can create your own safe space and the more often you do, the easier it becomes. Power can be taken, given or used. You can also choose your own response to power sent your way. I like to say you can fight the power or dance with the power. Larissa makes an essential point though: there is power that is socially or culturally conferred or inferred based on stories we tell ourselves and each other. These stories are based on nothing more than what we see: skin color, gender or other body characteristics. Power that is given through these cultural stories is privilege. Power taken through these stories is oppression. One of the most powerful things we can do as change-makers is to notice and question these stories. Seeing is the first step. Larissa points out that if you can't feel the energy in the room, it's hard to do anything to shift it. If you don't see the effect these stories have on our day-to-day lives, it can be very hard to change them. Wayfinding is seeing signs and finding our way on poorly marked paths. Wayfinding has it's roots in traditional cultures: The Polynesisans could use the stars, wind and waves to find their way across tremendous ocean distances. Similarly, Native Americans used signals of all sorts to find food, shelter and sacred spaces. In her Wayfinding work, Larissa is calling our attention to these old ways of seeing and asking us to use our own senses to see the signposts in our lives and work. Inner sensing is valid. One thing I always try to convey in my facilitation masterclasses is that you are in the room and you experience what is in the room. It can be hard to know if we, ourselves, are anxious about our role as facilitators or if the room is experiencing anxiety. It's only by getting in touch with our inner sensations that we can ever tell the difference between our own experience and our experience of what's happening in the room. Larissa points out that there can be a stigma to that which is felt and that which exists "only" in our interior, beyond the reach of measuring tools. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Larissa Conte on the web: http://www.wayfinding.io/ Larissa's talk at Responsive 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lf2uOzr78 The Future of Work https://www.oecd.org/employment/future-of-work/ The Teal Movement: http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Teal_Organizations for more on Self Management check out my episode with Sally Sally McCutchion on Holacracy and Self Management at all levels of organization http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/6/sally-mccutchion-on-holacracy-and-self-management-at-all-levels-of-organization Othering and Belonging: http://conference.otheringandbelonging.org/ Alan Watts on The Intelligence of the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZbThJg6ehU Jon Young http://8shields.org/about/ Wade Davis: The Wayfinders: https://www.amazon.com/Wayfinders-Ancient-Wisdom-Matters-Lecture/dp/0887847668 Tom Brown https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Browns-Science-Art-Tracking/dp/0425157725/ full transcript here: theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/7/9/post-title-power-ritual-and-wayfinding

Buckle in, ladies and gentlemen, for some straight talk about the future of work, the nature of the universe and the power of changing systems to change behavior. Today I'm sharing a deep and rambling conversation I had a few months back with Aaron Dignan, author of Brave New Work and founder of the Ready, an org transformation partner to companies like Airbnb, Edelman and charity: water. He is a cofounder of responsive.org, an amazing community of like-minded transformation professionals. If you haven't checked out their conference, it's great. I co-facilitated some sessions there last year and I can highly recommend it. You should also check out the episode I had recently on asking better questions with Robin Zander, who hosts the conference. http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/4/23/robin-p-zander-asking-better-questions I owe a debt of gratitude to Aaron. It was his OS Canvas, published in 2016 on Medium, that got me thinking differently about my own work in Conversation Design and led me to develop my own Conversation OS Canvas. His OS Canvas clarified and simplified a complex domain of thinking – organizational change – into (then) just nine factors. In the book it's evolved into 12 helpful prompts to provoke clear thinking and to accelerate powerful conversations about how to change the way we work – if you are willing to create the time and space for the conversation. Aaron doesn't pull any punches – as he says, "the way we work is badly broken and a century old". And he figures that "a six year old could design a good org, you just have to ask the socratic questions." His OS Canvas can help you start the conversation about changing the way you work in your org and his excellent book will help you dive deep into principles, practices and stories for each element of the OS. You'll find in the show notes some deep-dives on the two core principles of org design from the book. The first principle is being complexity Conscious. The second is being people positive. For more on complexity – dig into Cynefin (which is not spelled the way it sounds). And for more on people positivity, there's a link to Theory X vs Theory Y, a very helpful mental model in management theory. Another powerful idea that I want to highlight is Aaron's suggestion that we all have our own "system of operating" or "a way of being in the world" which is "made up of assumptions and principles and practices and norms and patterns of behavior and it's coded into the system." Aaron goes on to say that "people are chameleons and people are highly sensitive to the culture and environment they're in. And the system, the aquarium, the container tells us a lot about how we're supposed to show up. And over time it can even beat us into submission. And so we have to change the system and that's hard to do when we're reinforcing things that we ourselves didn't even create," From my own work on conversation design, it's very clear to me that communication is held in a space, or transmitted through an interface – the air, the internet, a whiteboard. The space your culture happens in is one very key component of how to shift your culture. Check out my episode with Elliot of Brightspot Strategy for more on changing conversations through changing spaces: http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/7/24/elliot-felix-of-brightspot-strategy-on-changing-conversations-through-changing-spaces Changing your physical space is easy compared with shifting power and distributing authority more thoughtfully in your organization. To do that, we need to shift not just our org structures, but our own OS: we need more leaders who can show up as facilitators and coaches rather than order-givers. And that takes, as Aaron points out, a brave mindset. If you want to become a more facilitative leader of innovation and change in your company, you should definitely apply before August to the first cohort of the 12-week Innovation Leadership Accelerator I'm co-hosting with Jay Melone from New Haircut, a leader in Design Sprint Training. It kicks off in NYC with a 2-day workshop in September, runs for 12 weeks of remote coaching and closes with another 2-day workshop. We'll have several amazing guest coaches during the program – a few of which have been wonderful guests on this very show: Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences and head of Customer Success at Mural and Bree Groff, Principle at SY Partners and former CEO of change consultancy NOBL. http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/2/5/jim-kalbach-gets-teams-to-map-experiences http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/season-three/bree-groff-grief-and-change Show Notes The OS Canvas Medium post that started it all for me: https://medium.com/the-ready/the-os-canvas-8253ac249f53 The Ready https://theready.com/ Brave New Work https://www.bravenewwork.com/ Complexity Conscious: Cynefin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework Being people positive: Theory X vs Theory Y https://en.wikipedia.org/