The Phrases on my Wall

I have a piece of paper taped to my wall. It's been there for more than ten years, and it's faded enough now that you'd have to know what it says to read it.

I know what it says. It's four phrases I learned at a facilitation training in 2015. I made the little poster the day I got back to work, and I've been reaching for them ever since.

The training was called Leading through Artful Facilitation (or LAF'ing, as everyone called it). I took it because Zane and Elaine Cornett had been supporting the leadership team on the Tongass National Forest, where I was serving at the time, and encouraged me to attend. I had just landed my first job with "facilitator" actually in the title, after years of doing the work as part of other roles, and I was eager for anything that would lessen the impostor syndrome and the anxiety of feeling responsible for a group's success.

The training itself was excellent, but what struck me most wasn't a particular technique. It was the realization that communication skills are teachable: they can be named, practiced, and learned the same way you'd learn algebra or silviculture. I'd always assumed people were either naturally good with other people or they weren't. These four phrases showed me otherwise. They were specific tools, and specific tools can be practiced.

The first one is the phrase I probably use most often:

"Help me understand (your perspective or rationale)." Three words at the front of a sentence, and the conversation immediately feels different, because it's hard to say help me understand in a way that sounds like an attack. The catch is written in red marker on the poster: if genuine, leads to curiosity. That's the whole point. If you're only asking while you wait for your turn to disagree, people can tell. But when you're actually curious, it changes the room. I use this one as a parent almost as often as I use it as a facilitator.

The second phrase is close behind:

"What's important to you …?”

This one helps me understand what's underneath someone's position. A participant insists a certain group doesn't belong at the table. An agency rep says the timeline is fixed and non-negotiable. My daughter informs me that something is completely unfair.

Instead of debating whether they're right, I ask what's important to them about it, and almost always, what comes back is more useful than the original statement. My notes say this phrase reveals values and interests, and that's true, and the “magic” is what happens next: when people feel you hear what actually matters to them, conversations tend to open up. I've found that's just as true around the dinner table as it is around a conference table.

The other two phrases do something a little different. "If... then..." helps people think through possibilities without feeling pushed into them. "What will it take to...?" hands responsibility back to the person who owns the issue. These second two phrases are really about ownership, and they help me resist the urge to solve every problem in the room.

That piece of paper is still on my wall, much of the ink long faded. The phrases aren't, in fact, magic. They stay there because they remind me of something I still have to practice: be curious, listen longer, ask one more question before offering an answer, and trust the people in the room to do their own thinking. On my best days, that's the whole job: asking the question that helps someone else find their own answer.