How to facilitate meaningful conversations
1. Problem / Opportunity
You joined a new team or organization and have one-on-ones with 25 people in 10 days. How do you connect with people, build trust, and learn about their internal landscape? How do you achieve that in 30-minute conversations?
2. Solution
Create a psychologically safe environment by using a technique called Clean Language. When the other person shares something that you want to learn more about, ask a question in a way that allows them to use their own vocabulary and metaphors.
Here are a few questions you can use:
- If you want to know more about the outcome or future of a situation, ask "What happens next?".
- If you want to understand what previous event led to a situation, ask "Where does… come from?" or "What happens just before?".
- If you want to get details about a situation, ask "What kind of…?" or "Is there anything else about…?".
- If you want to learn about the location of a situation, ask "Where is…?".
- If you want to reveal a metaphor, ask "What's that like?" or "That’s… like what?".
Example of a clean conversation
Let's see an example of using Clean Language techniques in conversations.
You: What challenges are important for the team?
Them: the team needs a testing environment.
Non-clean answer: What kind of software do you need? (don't use words the person didn't use. Let them come up with their own vocabulary).
Clean answer: What kind of testing environment?
Them: my head explodes when I try to test our services together with it's dependent services.
Non-clean answer: does it frustrate you? (don't guess their emotions, let them share their world in their own language and metaphors).
Clean answer: and then what happened?
Them: Last week we had a production outage that impacted our customer and our testing environment didn't detect that.
3. Behind the scenes
Clean Language is a communication and coaching technique developed by David Grove, a psychotherapist and researcher. Its primary value proposition lies in its ability to facilitate clear, open, and non-judgmental communication while exploring a person's thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The technique is often used in coaching, therapy, counseling, and various forms of personal development.
Learn more about Clean Language: https://unconsciousagile.com/articles/clean_language.