Why is your smart team getting disappointing results?
Because your team is making decisions without the critical information they need. They’re not telling the right people the right stuff.
Right people: Going straight to the source instead of talking behind people’s backs.
Right stuff: Starting with the specifics instead of leading with their generalities.
Hinken Renewal equips you to facilitate productive conversations, so your team gets the results you can all be proud of.
The Productive Conversation Playbook:
your step-by-step guide
The assessment is free
and takes about 5 minutes
Productive conversations put critical information on the table.
The High Cost of Missing Critical Information
When critical information gets diverted or distorted:
Team Performance Suffers
- Preventable failures. Projects fail and commitments slip, and you learn later that someone saw it coming but told everyone except the people who could act on it.
- Under-informed decisions. People defend their conclusions instead of sharing what they’ve actually seen and heard, so the most confident idea wins, not the best-informed one.
Team Trust Breaks Down
- Toxic silence. People get quiet in meetings, and the real issues get discussed everywhere except where they can be resolved.
- Judgments prevail. Team members size each other up with generalities like “He never follows through,” and they stick to the person rather than getting tested.
Team Members Pull Back
- Disengagement. People stop offering what they’re thinking and do only what’s asked, because speaking up doesn’t seem worth it.
- Losing your best people. High performers leave, not for better pay, but because they feel unheard or stifled.
It’s frustrating. You know this team is capable of so much more.
The Quality and Structure of a Team’s Conversations
Are the Fundamental Drivers of Its Success*
Teams that get this right learn together and get results they can all be proud of.
And conversation quality comes down to two questions: who you talk to, and what you talk about.
Only one combination works: talking with the right people about the right stuff.
Discover your team’s conversation quality by taking the free assessment.
Get a personalized report showing where your team stands.
*Based on the research of Hackman and Edmondson (Harvard), Pentland (MIT), and Google’s Project Aristotle.
It's Not Your Fault. It's the Default.
Without facilitation, every team drifts into wrong conversations, even teams full of good people with good intentions.
The way out isn’t more meetings or better refereeing. It’s building productive conversation skills into the leadership you already do, so your team learns to talk with the right people about the right stuff.
Two Tools, One for Each Side of the Grid
The Direct Conversation Standard gets your team’s concerns to the right people. When someone brings you a concern about a teammate, you redirect it. When you have a concern, you go direct.
The Learner’s Ladder fills those conversations with the right stuff: what people actually saw and heard, and how they interpreted it, shared and tested before anyone treats a conclusion as fact.
Together, they move your team up and to the right, into Productive Conversations.
Three Ways to Start Facilitating the Conversations Your Team Needs
You want a team that learns together and gets results you can all be proud of. This requires learning to facilitate productive conversations: everyday leadership skills that get the right people talking about the right stuff.
Whether you learn on your own, with a coach, or alongside your team, the goal is the same: productive conversation habits that stay in place long after the support ends. Choose the type of support that fits you best.
LEARN ON YOUR OWN
LEARN WITH A COACH
LEARN WITH YOUR TEAM
Meet Your Guide
Brian Hinken has spent more than 25 years equipping hundreds of leaders to turn wrong conversations into productive ones, through coaching, training, facilitation, and practical tools. His book, The Learner’s Path, is a core source for the practices he teaches.
Brian has equipped hundreds of leaders at the following organizations:
How Leaders Turn Wrong Conversations into Productive Ones
You want to lead a team that learns its way to remarkable results.
But right now, your team members are withholding critical information from those who need it, and sharing untested generalities with those who don’t. Projects slip, good people leave, and decisions get made without the critical information they need. It’s frustrating.
None of this means you’re failing as a leader. Wrong conversations are what happens on any team without facilitation, and that can change. For more than 25 years, Brian Hinken has equipped hundreds of leaders to change it. Successful leaders who learn to facilitate productive conversations move through four phases:
- Evaluate the conversations your team is really having. Start with the free assessment.
- Equip yourself with the Productive Conversation Framework and its two tools: the Direct Conversation Standard for talking with the right people, and the Learner’s Ladder for talking about the right stuff. Learn them well, so you can use them with confidence as your team learns them.
- Equip your team with the Productive Conversation Framework, so their conversations are directed to the right people and filled with the right stuff.
- Embed the practices into your team’s everyday work, then monitor and maintain them so productive conversations become your team’s habit.
How you move through these phases is up to you. If you already have strong facilitation skills, then practical tools and step-by-step guides may be all you need. If you want a thinking partner, then coaching will help you go deeper and move faster. And if your whole team needs a reset, then training and team facilitation bring everyone along together. Many leaders build productive conversation habits on their team in as little as six months.
So start today: take the free assessment to see which conversations your team is having, or schedule a time to talk about what your team needs. Stop watching important information get held back and untested generalities get passed around, and start leading a team that says what it knows, tests what it thinks, and learns from what happens.