How do you turn great conversations with your team into lasting change?

Many times, when we finish an engagement with a client, they ask us, “How do we make the most out of the conversation we just had? How do we put everything we learned to work?”

Here’s a list of questions we created to help them do just that. Try them out with your team to help translate a meaningful conversation or experience into the kind of change you want to see in the long run.

1. What new way of seeing, thinking, or behaving did that experience give you?

Great conversations give us a window into a new world of what might be; they get us out of our normal scripts and inspire collective hope. Take time to remember and articulate that new world. What does it sound like, feel like, look like? What phrases or behaviors during the experience helped you see that new world? Why do you think you were able to see that world so clearly?

2. Where are the seeds of those new things already present in what you do now — however nascent?

Even though the conversation may have helped you see something for the first time, that doesn’t mean that new world with those new possibilities weren’t already there. Many of those answers could have been latent within the team from the start. Like an archeologist, dig back through your experience to uncover how your team might already be thinking or behaving in these new ways.

3. Therefore, what should we start, stop, or keep doing?

Using the insights from the prior questions, come up with a list of concrete actions the team can start, stop, or keep doing. Focus less on one-time actions or outcomes, and zero-in instead on process. What daily and weekly habits do you want the team to form? What words or phrases do you want to hear over and over again? What simple rules of thumb or conversational guides can you use when facing a challenge or making a decision?

4. Who might help guide us as we do that?

This kind of behavior change is hard, and we can all-too-easily get sucked back into old ways of acting and thinking. Identify and involve a trusted person who can help keep you focused and moving forward. Ask yourself - who can help us become the kind of team we want to become? Now go ask them to join you.

5. Who might you thank?

Finally, find a way to extend gratitude and recognize the contribution of someone on your team. Gratitude expressed through word and action can sustain the emotions and insights you gained during a powerful experience, create better alignment amongst the group, and build a greater sense of trust that you’ll need as you begin the hard work of changing behaviors over time. Besides, it’s just a nice thing to do.