Your team members are having the wrong conversations with the wrong people.
Hinken Renewal equips you with the facilitative leadership practices that get your team talking with the right people about the right stuff.
The High Cost of Wrong Conversations
When wrong conversations take hold:
- Projects fail and commitments slip, and you learn that someone saw it coming and told everyone else but you.
- Your best people start looking for other jobs to get away from the drama on the team.
- You spend your days refereeing team members’ complaints about each other, instead of leading the team forward.
- Your team members are withholding critical information from those who need it, and sharing untested judgments with those who don’t.
It’s exhausting, and it’s not the team you set out to lead.
The Quality of a Team’s Conversations
is the Strongest Predictor of Its Success*
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.
Take a free assessment of your team’s conversation quality
and get a personalized report showing where your team stands.
*Based on the research of Human Dynamics (MIT), Psychological Safety (Edmondson), and Organizational Learning (Argyris; Senge).
Three Ways to Become the Facilitative Leader Your Team Needs
You want a cohesive team that addresses its critical issues skillfully. This requires learning to become a facilitative leader: someone whose everyday leadership practices gets 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: facilitative leadership that stays 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
Brian provides training and facilitation for your team, working alongside you so you learn to lead these conversations yourself.
Wrong Conversations Are Exhausting.
Improving Them Doesn’t Have to Be
When your team drifts into wrong conversations, it’s not your fault. It’s the default. Without facilitation, it happens to every team, even teams full of good people with good intentions.
The way out isn’t more meetings or better refereeing. It’s building facilitative practices into the leadership you are already doing, so your team learns to talk with the right people about the right stuff.
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 leaders at the following organizations:
How Facilitative Leaders Turn Wrong Conversations into Productive Ones
You want to lead a cohesive team that addresses its critical issues skillfully.
But right now, your team members are withholding critical information from those who need it, and sharing untested judgments with those who don’t. Projects slip, good people leave, and you spend your days refereeing team members’ complaints about each other. It’s exhausting.
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. Every successful facilitative leader moves through four phases:
- Recognize which conversations your team is really having.
- Model productive conversations yourself: bring concerns to the people involved, and share observations and interpretations instead of judgments.
- Equip your team with two proven methods: the Direct Conversation Standard for talking with the right people, and the Productive Conversation Framework for talking about the right stuff.
- Embed these practices into the meetings you already have, 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 facilitation bring everyone along together. Many leaders build a cohesive team that addresses its critical issues in as little as six months.
So start today with practical tools and guides, or book a call to talk about what your team needs. Stop refereeing complaints and start leading a team that talks with the right people about the right stuff.
This is the team you set out to lead.
