1. Focused Conversation
Based on the book The Art of Focused Conversation by R. Brian Stanfield

2. Objectives
Understand the difference between teaching/training and facilitating.
Listen to how a typical conversation sounds like.
Learn about the power of questions.
Practice the four levels of the Technology of Participation.

3. Select a partner and have a three minute conversation.

4. Did you…..
Interrupt, or feel the desire to interrupt?

5. Did you….. Interrupt, or feel the desire to interrupt?
Feel the need to be witty or use jargon?

6. Did you….. Interrupt, or feel the desire to interrupt?
Feel the need to be witty or use jargon?
Display superior knowledge or one-up-man-ship?

7. Where you an Advocate or an Inquirer?
Advocate – one who pleads, recommends, or pushes a specific perspective or point of view.
Inquirer – comes at a conversation with an open mind, listening for creative new ideas or options.

8. Western Culture Being forceful Articulate advocate
Seeks the truth, need to “be right”
Expresses opinions about everything

9. The Tyranny of “OR”
The genius of AND
Parallel Truths OR

10. I like the new Healthful Living Essential Standards.

11. I don’t! They are too confusing and the old Standard Course of Study is just fine.

12. Critical Thinker

13. .
The easiest critical comment is a negative one.

14. Criticism Criticism takes very little effort. All
you have to do is choose a different
frame of reference and you have a free field to fire your intellectual howitzers.

15. Criticism
Criticism as the first step in a discussion stops the discussion
and is, therefore, generally the last
step in the
conversation.

16. Focused Conversation
The power lies in the capacity to ask questions and elicit answers from other.

17. Focused Conversation
Complex Issues
No one
individual
knows the
answer

18. Focused Conversation
The task of the conversation leader is to release the damned up genius, wisdom, and experience of the group.

19. Technology of Participation
Objective level – questions about facts and external reality
Reflective level – immediate personal reaction to the data, sometimes emotions or feelings
Interpretive level – questions to draw out meaning, value, significance and implications
Decision level – questions to elicit resolution and bring the discussion to an end

20. Your Turn

21. Training/Teaching or Facilitation
Teachers and trainers have been taught to correct, amplify, and amend what has been said. A leader of a focused conversation has nothing to teach.

22. Tips for Leading a Focused Conversation
Select a suitable setting

23. Tips
The first question

24. Tips
Subsequent Questions

25. Tips Getting off the topic It is not a discipline problem.
The human brain is
very associative,
which makes straying
away from topics quit easy.

26. Long or abstract answers
Tips
Long or abstract answers

27. Tips
An argument
breaks out

28. Answers that are unethical or factually wrong
Tips
Answers that are unethical or factually wrong
Don’t let it pass

29. Tips
People react
to others’
answers

30. Tips
Closing