Three sets of questions I use in sessions

These are not a teaser for the real thing. They are the real thing: the questions I ask, written down so you can use them without me.

One instruction that matters more than it sounds: write the answers. Thinking them through in your head lets you skip the uncomfortable one, and the uncomfortable one is usually the point.

Before a hard conversation

Most difficult conversations go badly because we rehearse our side thoroughly and never consider theirs. Five minutes on these changes the outcome more than an hour of rehearsing your argument.

• What’s the one thing that must be true when this conversation ends?
• What does the other person want here that’s legitimate?
• What am I afraid they’ll say, and what would I do if they said it?
• Where am I willing to move, and where am I genuinely not?
• What’s my first sentence? Write it out. The opening sets the temperature.

When you can’t get started

Resistance almost always means the thing matters. Run through this before concluding you’re just unmotivated.

• Is the task unclear, or genuinely hard? Those need different fixes.
• Am I avoiding the work, or avoiding finding out whether I’m good enough?
• What’s the smallest version of this that would still count?
• What time tomorrow will I do it, and what have I moved to make room?
• Who will ask me whether it happened?

Once a quarter

Twenty minutes, four times a year. This catches drift long before it becomes a wasted year.

• What did I say mattered three months ago, and did my calendar agree?
• What did I get done that I’m genuinely proud of?
• What have I been carrying that I should put down?
• What’s the one thing that, if it went well, would make the next quarter a success?

The question you don’t want to answer is the one worth answering.

All three work on your own. They work considerably faster with someone asking the follow-up when your first answer is the tidy one. But that’s what the calls are for, and these are yours either way.