Conversations Worth Having

4What’s Driving Your Conversation?

Each person’s life is lived as a series of conversations.

– Deborah Tannen

Tone and direction are simple cues that tell us what kind of conversation we are in. How we got into that kind of a conversation is a different story, yet it is an important one to understand if we want to make sure we have conversations that feel good (on balance) and that take us where we want to go. If we are not aware of what’s driving our conversations, it is much more difficult to practice positive framing and generative questions. Our personal frame, expectations, and assumptions can get in the way. Fortunately, David Cooper-rider has identified a set of explicit principles—the Appreciative Inquiry Principles—that underlie your ...