The Conversation Factory

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. How am I showing up into this space? Do I need to let go of anything in order for me to be completely present for the person in front of me?” mikesagun.com The Unshakeable Man Mike's TEDxKP Talk Mike on LinkedIn EVRYMAN 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  

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 to grow. I have a free course on Exploring and Expanding your roles as a facilitator, which you can find here. There is so much goodness in Tomomi’s reflections. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. 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

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 On Commitment: commit to the conversation and the people in the conversation first, not your values and ideas first Min 60 Re: Ending Principles: “Anyone who ends five minutes early, an angel gets their wings.” 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. 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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 to sort of rally around that. Be honest and open. Say, "Hey, this is not my thing, but that's your thing. Or maybe if this isn't for you, try something else." I don't know. It's just a comfort in my own skin and trying to live through that. I think people respond to that, especially your younger designers when they see the boss say, "I don't know that, but I know this guy that knows that so we're just going to go ask him," and it's okay. More About Demetrius Demetrius Romanos is a business-minded, brand experience evangelist.  A consummate design diplomat, he’s been preaching the gospel that “everything matters,” from his time working in renowned consultancies to his present role SVP of Design & Development at Ergobaby. For over 20 years, Romanos has applied his creative leadership, strategic thinking and deep empathy to help companies use design strategically to change corporate culture and drive top and bottom line growth.  A graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s industrial design program, Romanos has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers, as well as being included in the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum’s first Design Triennial.  

“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."