Your team members are having the wrong conversations with the wrong people.
Hinken Renewal equips you to get your team talking with the right people about the right stuff.
The High Cost of Wrong Conversations
When wrong conversations take hold:
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.
- Stalled decisions. Decisions made in the meeting get undone in the hallway, and the same problems come back week after week.
Team Trust Breaks Down
- Toxic silence. People go quiet in meetings, and the real issues get discussed everywhere except where they can be resolved.
- Conflict goes underground. Team members complain about each other instead of talking to each other, and you end up refereeing instead of leading.
Team Members Pull Back
- Disengagement. People stop offering ideas 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 demoralizing, 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*
Teams that get this right become cohesive teams that address their critical issues skillfully.
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 Human Dynamics (MIT), Psychological Safety (Edmondson), and Organizational Learning (Argyris; Senge).
It's Not Your Fault. It's the Default.
Facilitative Leadership Is Your Best Way Forward.
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.
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:
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 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
Brian provides training and facilitation for your team, working alongside you so you learn to lead these conversations yourself.
How 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. Successful leaders who learn to facilitate productive conversations move through four phases:
- Recognize which conversations your team is really having. Start with the free assessment.
- 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 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 judgments get passed around, and start leading a cohesive team that addresses its critical issues skillfully.
This is the team you set out to lead.
