I can’t believe it’s taken me SO long to share this conversation with the Amazing Elise Foster. Elise is a powerful coach, an accomplished author, and a friend. She’s the co-author of The Multiplier Effect with Liz Wiseman and Beautiful Questions in the Classroom with Warren Berger (who’s written several bestselling books on powerful questions). She was a thinking partner for me when I was in the early stages of writing my second book, and I was shocked and honored when she decided to come to my Facilitation Masterclass and even more shocked and honored when she actually got something out of it - proving that it really is more about what they practice and the container I create than what I teach! I’m also honored that she’s been a great member of the Conversation Factory Insiders’ group - we started 2 years ago with alums of the masterclass meeting monthly for experiments and intentional practice, and 2 years and 22 sessions later, we’ve all learned a tremendous amount about leading groups online. Elise was kind enough to lead a session for the community on the QFT, a Question Formulation Technique from the Right Question Institute which has shifted how I think about Powerful Questions and how I coach teams on them, too. In this conversation, I wanted Elise to unpack not just some of her favorite “Eye Opener” warmup exercises to help get teams to think differently, but also how she thinks about bringing them into sessions with teams, and why they matter. Lots of folks talk about icebreakers - and they can be helpful to help us connect to each other from afar…but they are such a broad class of activities - they can include games like “Two truths and lie” which are just about connecting people as humans or “three things”, a classic improv game which helps folks just warm up their brains. Priya Parker asks folks to check into the chat with where they are and what actual substance is beneath their feet, to help ground and connect us. Eye-openers are both about what we do, as leaders and coaches of people in the moment, in order to create an experience for people…and eye-openers are also about how we help people reflect and unpack that experience and how to connect it to a larger idea about transformation and development. Elise kicks our conversation off by talking about the “Hand Clasping Game”, a classic exercise that you can try now since we talk about it, but don’t give it enough time to “breathe” in the conversation. Just clasp your hands together naturally. Of course, this assumes you have two hands. If this doesn’t apply to you, I hope you can imagine the process. Now, unclasp your hands and “reclasp them” but shift hands - whatever hand was “pinky out” let the other hand be the “pinky out” hand. Elise calls this “reversing the weave” of your hands. What do you feel? Discomfort. Oddness. Weirdness. That is a raw, visceral experience. Now, the magic happens when Elise unpacks this experience, and applies it to the context she works in - Leadership Transformation.  Having a toolbox or a mental “file” of these exercises can be great…in fact, I have a whole online course about them. But as Elise and I discuss, having the wherewithal to bring one of these out in a session also takes some guts and some faith. You take some trust the team has in you and burn it…risk it on an edgy experience…and hopefully you earn that trust back, with dividends, at the end of the unpacking. Also worth noting is that this is the second episode on the theme of “An experience is worth a thousand slides” when it comes to coaching executive mindset shifts... The first conversation was with Jeff Gothelf, most notably the co-author of Lean UX, where we talked about the Vase and Flowers exercise, another powerful eye-opener that I love very much. This episode is short and sweet, so without further delay, 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. 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!

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 Facilitating Breakthrough, by Adam Kahane Reos Partners Adam Kahane on The Conversation Factory

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 the process - in other words, they need facilitation skills: structures to help our conversations be productive: listening non-defensively to critique, exploring disconfirming data with curiosity, accepting imperfect data and moving on... these are not Design Thinking tools, these are conversation design tools. This is where DT bleeds into leadership and self-management. Another point from our conversation that is really important is that different people have different experiences throughout the arc of the design thinking process. Jeanne has this wonderful diagram in her book about how the different DISC profiles of influencer, analyst, driver, and supporter will have different emotional arcs as they go through the Design Thinking process from beginning to end. I think it's really, really important to understand that we need to have empathy with all of our collaborators. We may have a great time with the upfront part of the process, like discovery, and have a really hard time during prototyping and testing. We need a diverse group of collaborators so that we can draw on their perspectives and balance our experience with theirs.  It's important to push against our own biases and to continuously ask, "What kind of diversity is needed for this challenge?" For that, I highly recommend you listen to my conversation with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, who I spoke with earlier this year about Decolonizing Design Thinking. It's a really powerful conversation.  It was a great pleasure to be able to sit down and talk with Jeanne Liedtka, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Links: Jeanne's Website Why Design Thinking Works Jeanne's books The Iceberg of DT ROI: from Jeanne’s interview with Mural: https://www.mural.co/roi