I'm so thrilled to share this conversation with you. Meeting Fred Dust came, as all the best things in life do, through a series of random conversations.

Fred is a former global managing partner at the acclaimed design firm IDEO. He currently consults with the Rockefeller Foundation on the future of global dialogue, and with other foundations, like The Einhorn Family Fund to host constructive dialogue. His work is dedicated  to rebuilding human connection in a climate of widespread polarization and cynicism. 

I will tread lightly on this introduction. Fred’s book, Making Conversation, is both a straightforward and delightfully lyrical book about how to see conversations as an act of creativity. We are never just participants in a conversation...we’re co-creators. And we can step up and re-design our conversations if we look with new eyes.

I’ll share one surprisingly simple tool from Fred’s book that I’ve started to use in my own coaching work. A director I am working with sketched out a whole script about how they wanted to address some concerns her direct reports had. After reading over the approach, I asked them:

“If you could choose 3 adjectives to describe how you want your reports to feel after this conversation, what would they be?”

They thought for a moment, and provided some words. These adjectives are the goal and the way. 

“Looking over this conversation script, do you think you’ll get those three words out of this conversation map?”

On reflection, it was clear that there were some simple changes to make. 

Brainstorming adjectives also allowed us to have a deeper conversation about what their goals were - what were they really hoping to get out of the conversation? Searching for those adjectives was clarifying. 

This is the power of reflecting on your design principles. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of an agenda or a meeting...but if you know your design principles, why you’re committing to the conversation and how you want someone to feel after the conversation is over, it can provide powerful clarity when you’re sailing through the fog.

Finding someone else in the world who’s taking a design lens on conversations and communication is so delightful for me. Fred’s work feels like the other side of the coin of my own. Enjoy the conversation and enjoy his book, Making Conversation, which is out now.

You can also find Fred on twitter as @FREDDUST.

Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources

Find Fred on Twitter @FREDDUST

A video trailer for the book

His book on Amazon.

The origins of brainstorming

Min 7

I don't consider myself a facilitator. Certainly, I can facilitate conversations and that's what I like to do and I like doing that, but I really consider myself a designer of conversations. What that means is it allows us to kind of step back and say, “I don't have to be the one, I don't have to be in the conversation. The conversation can be successful.” Often what I'll do is I'll design structures for conversations where somebody else entirely can run them.

Min 8

when you start to think of conversation as an act of creativity or if you don't self-identify as somebody who's creative as an act of making, so just like something that you can make, everybody's a maker of some form or another. It allows you to say, “Wait a second, I don't have to just be a victim to this conversation. I can make the construct of the conversation. I can make the rules.” 

Min 11

Dining rooms became vestigial in America... Often dining rooms became offices and other things. Then not only that, gradually we put TVs everywhere and so in a world where the last thing… Not to get too intimate, but how does having a television in your bedroom affect your… If you have with your partner? The last thing or first thing you're seeing is something.

Min 20:

Have as few rules as possible

Right now I would say, what I'm finding is four rules are often even too much because I think I had a limit of four. I would say given our brain's capacity during COVID and during the political strife and just this, the social moment we're in and our fear and anxiety, I'm pretty good with two.

Min 32

Against Active Listening

The point is we've adopted active listening and put it into places it was never really intended to be. It was not meant to be the primary language of human resources, HR. It was not meant to be a boss's way of not listening to the complaints of a person who reports them and that's how we use it now. We use it as a way of signaling a subtle form of agreement but not really.

Min 49

On encouraging the world to start designing conversations...and taking time for self care!

“You can do this. Don't think you can't.” But by the way, if you can't, it's okay to just take a break and go lie down on the floor .

Min 53

On keeping a conversations notebook:

write down the conversations you thought really worked and you start to say, “What worked about those conversations?”... you start to discover in your own world, what those things are (that work)

Min 56

On Commitment:

commit to the conversation and the people in the conversation first, not your values and ideas first

Min 60

Re: Ending Principles:

“Anyone who ends five minutes early, an angel gets their wings.”

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