Daniel Stillman

Bringing stakeholders together for effective conversations is one of the most impactful leadership skills to hone. This was always challenging to do in person and can be even more challenging online. Honing your skills as a facilitative leader isn’t just about workshops, it’s about leading better meetings and conversations every day…what could be called Conversational Leadership. This session on Conversational Leadership will allow you to:

• Reflect on what makes an effective collaborative experience
• Understand the 9 elements of the Conversation OS Canvas and how to leverage these elements to design conversations that matter, and deliver results
• Develop and own your approach to facilitation and leadership while learning how others create the magic moments they lead.

Peter Senge suggested that our primary influence is through the environment we create.

As Facilitators, Coaches and Leaders, the way we create transformational environments is by asking transformational questions.

Powerful questions shift how people think and where they are focusing their attention.

Designing a powerful workshop, deep coaching session or impactful project is nothing more than asking a series of questions, in an order that fosters the experience you intend to – the environment you choose to create.

In this question clinic, each participant will share their most powerful questions, and reframe them using some fundamental mental models I’ll share from my book Good Talk: How to Design Conversations that Matter.

Each participant will leave with several new powerful questions, as well as a method for shifting questions in their work – for themselves, their teams and their clients.

WHAT ARE THE KEY TAKE-AWAYS OF THIS SESSION?

• Questions Can Be designed
• We can shift the orientation, origin and size of a question to shift how people are thinking
• Closed and Open Questions have their own benefits and relevant context – one is not better than the other
• Questions can point to the past, present or future (orientation) as well as come from the past, present or future (origin). Both the origin and orientation matter
• Understand the power of sequencing questions Understand the gaps in your palette of questions

Amelia Earhart, Aviation pioneer and author said:

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

Look around. Everything you see was made by groups of people who made a decision to act, together. Group collaboration and group decisions are the core of modern work.

Leading better decisions is a core leadership skill. Leading teams and organizations means making many difficult decisions. Many of those decisions are made in the absence of perfect information and perfect alignment. Each decision closes infinite possibilities…and opens up another set of possibilities.

Leadership is the art of designing the conditions for a transformative conversation. When a group is stuck in a decision, a leader can choose for the group…or lead the group through a process so that they can make a decision that they can all respect.

This interactive workshop will help you be more intentional about designing decision-making conversations and be more purposeful and effective as a leader.

I’ll coach you through designing a specific decision-making-conversation (or starting a new one!) in your work or life. Together, we’ll apply some key tools from Design Thinking like Empathy, Visual Thinking and Journey Mapping to help you define your approach to leading the change you want to see. We’ll also apply high-leverage elements of the Conversation Operating System Canvas to focus your approach to leading the change. We all design conversations…Design is just making things better on purpose (instead of by accident!). As Nobel Prize-winning economist Herb Simon said: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

AS A PARTICIPANT, YOU WILL:

• Reflect on and reimagine a challenging decision
• Develop an approach to bringing stakeholders to the table
• Learn to set the stage for a good decision
• Understand the fundamental ingredients and paradoxes of leading a decision
• Design a clear process for decision-making with simple recipes and frameworks
• Network with like-minded thinkers and learn from each other
• Leverage key elements of the Conversation OS Canvas, from Daniel’s book Good Talk: How to Design Conversations that Matter

Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar says, “If there’s more truth in hallways than in meetings, you have a problem.”

If you can’t even talk about something in the hallways, you have a bigger problem. Our own lives are defined by the conversations we can or can’t have. Similarly, our organizations are limited by the conversations they can or can’t have.

Leadership is the art of designing the conditions for a transformative conversation. This interactive workshop will help you be more intentional about designing conversations – which means being more purposeful and effective as a leader.

I’ll coach you through rethinking a specific conversation (or starting a new one!) in your work or life. Together, we’ll apply some key tools from Design Thinking like Empathy, Visual Thinking and Journey Mapping to help you define your approach to leading the change you want to see. We’ll also apply high-leverage elements of the Conversation Operating System Canvas to focus your approach to leading the change.

We all design conversations…Design is just making things better on purpose (instead of by accident!). As Nobel prize-winning economist Herb Simon said: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

AS A PARTICIPANT, YOU WILL:

• Reflect on and reimagine a challenging conversation
• Develop an approach to bringing stakeholders to the table
• Learn about how to start the conversation: What motivates people to participate?
• Network with like-minded thinkers and learn from each other
• Leverage key elements of the Conversation OS Canvas, from Daniel’s book Good Talk: How to Design Conversations that Matter

How do you create and lead a powerful group session? With a powerful agenda.

So many leaders I work with know Why they want to gather a group. They have important outcomes to get to. They may even have a few key activities they want to execute.

But which activities should you do first? How can you make sure that the session “lands” with the group – that your session will catalyze the impact you need to have?

SESSION DESIGN STARTS WITH SESSION SKETCHING:

I’ll share tools, templates and patterns to make session design fun and fast. We’ll work in small groups to get you rapid feedback on your session arcs and you’ll leave with a clear plan to make your next important workshop as powerful as you need it to be. We’ll leverage the tools and frameworks of Design Thinking, Narrative Design, and visual thinking.