In this episode, Georgie and I focus on first-time conversations with someone when a specific context has been layed out. These types of chats often happen when you've been directly introduced to someone or have met someone because you are each representing organisations with a specific objective in mind. We still label these conversations as forming because there is an opportunity to build a relationship with the other person, but sometimes the context takes centre stage and you forget to explore other ways to connect meaningfully with them.

Georgie and I try out 3 different ways of having the conversation with context:

• First, I dive directly into the reason for us meeting and bypass any exploratory conversation
• Second, we create space at the beginning of the discussion for exploration before shifting gears to the intended context
• Third, we meander our way through the discussion and touch on the initial context for the conversation at a high level, but there's no abrupt transition from the exploratory portion of the conversation to the planned focus
• Like last time, we talk about what we noticed in the dialog after each example. We highlight the pros and cons of each strategy and how it might influence outcomes.