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. Support the Podcast and Get insider Access https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

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." 

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