Good Talk is a step-by-step framework to effect change in your personal and professional conversations. With dozens of tools and interactive components, Good Talk is a handbook to navigate the conversations that matter.
“Leaders need to acquire mastery in designing conversations. The frameworks in this book will help teams align on vision, face hard issues and build a creative and inclusive team culture.”
Tin Kadoic
Design Lead
“Conversational Leadership is a new approach to aligning teams and leading change - which is more critical than ever - and has transformed how I lead Sprints and train Sprint Masters at Google.”
Kai Haley
Head of Design Relations and Lead of Sprint Master Academy
“Every project’s success depends on conversations. Good Talk unpacks ways that we can be intentional in our communication and collaboration - and build them into a more effective product design process.”
Aaron Irrizary
Design Director
Leadership is the art of designing transformative conversations.
Real change is needed, now, more than ever. This change can’t happen through force, edict or persuasion. The future will be built through conversation - and Good Talk will show you how.
“Conversations with customers, teams, and stakeholders are at the heart of everything design leaders do. Good Talk gets to the core of the matter, bringing awareness to our ability to intentionally design our conversations, and create the best outcomes for all involved.”
Purvi Shah
Head of Global Strategic Design Operations
“An intriguing book and presents a powerful concept. By using the principles of design thinking, Daniel teaches you to design impactful conversations.”
TENDAYI VIKI
Associate Partner and author of Pirates in the Navy and co-author of The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle
"How do you design better conversations in the workplace? I can think of no more important skill for a leader (or for anyone trying to improve the world of work for that matter) than the conversation skills this book unpacks in an incredibly practical and hands on way."
Didier Elzinga
CEO/Founder & People Geek
What’s Inside
How to see the structure of conversations.
Life is built one messy, slippery conversation at a time. While conversations feel hard to hold onto, ebbing and flowing, back and forth and into eventual silence, they each have a structure. The first step to changing your conversations is seeing what’s going on between the silence.
What is your Conversation Operating System?
Who gets invited to the conversation? Who speaks first? Where does the conversation take place? What happens if someone messes up? In every conversation, there are elements that guide the exchange. The nine elements of the Conversation OS Canvas can help you to shift the direction of your conversations.
What is your conversational range?
Conversations are more than dialogue. From the conversations in your head to the complex conversation that is your organization, you need to design conversations that matter across a huge range of sizes. Learn to master conversations from the boardroom and beyond.
How to design conversations that matter.
The world needs fresh, creative conversations that are alive, and that work for all the people involved. How can you design conversations that matter? Leadership means designing the conditions for these conversations to happen. Learn the patterns and principles to make change possible.
About the Author
Daniel Stillman designs conversations for a living, and insists that you do, too. He works with organizations like Google, Nike and Visa to help them frame and sustain productive dialog, deepen their facilitation skills, and coach them through the innovation process. He also hosts The Conversation Factory podcast where he interviews leaders, changemakers and innovators on how they design the conversations in their work and lives.
Good Talk in the Media
How Remote Working Is Reshaping A Future New World Of Work
“Many people hadn't planned to be in this situation, so we're meeting their pets and their kids, too. But we've also been given an opportunity. Our default tools and default ways of meeting don't work as well virtually. Working remotely asks us to be more intentional in how we talk and collaborate — in this way, we're better able to design the experience in ways we weren't able to before. I hope people will learn to bring some of these insights back into how we communicate ‘in real life’ . . . once we can do that again. My hope is also that we learn that we don't have to get on a plane and get into the same physical room in order to have an impactful, human conversation."
Has the Coronavirus Made Us More Human?
Daniel Stillman, the author of the forthcoming book, Good Talk: How to Design Conversations That Matter, is hopeful that some of this humanity will stick upon re-entry. He believes working from home and collaborating remotely is strangely intimate, because we’re peering into people’s homes and getting a window into their lives.