Good Talk: How to Design Conversations that Matter

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.

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.

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.

“A rich, thoughtful, and useful handbook for designing conversations that create meaningful change.” – Dave Gray, co-author of Gamestorming, author of Liminal Thinking

“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, Culture Amp

“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, Google

“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, Airbnb

“Every project’s success depends on conversations. Critiquing, facilitation, presentation, strategy, etc. all depend on an ability to objectively and collaboratively communicate. 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, Capital One

Daniel Stillman designs conversations for a living, and insists that you actually do that too. As an independent design facilitator, he works with clients and organizations of all shapes and sizes to help them frame and sustain productive and collaborative conversations, deepen their facilitation skills, and coach them through the innovation process. His first book, The 30 Second Elephant and the Paper Airplane Experiment is about origami and teams and yes, it’s as strange as it sounds. He 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 is a playfully written invitation to each of us to challenge conventional thinking about conversation. You’ll walk away with greater awareness of how your natural tendencies support or limit possibility, as well as practical tools to positively shift the way you engage with others.” – Elise Foster, co-Author of The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools

“Good Talk is a practical reference and an essential playbook – it offers a powerful framework and wide-ranging material to make explicit all of our choices when we’re interacting with people.” – Steve Portigal, User Research consultant, author of Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries and host of Dollars to Donuts

“If you are under the false and dangerous assumption that having good, productive conversations is just natural to us as humans, this book is for you. Daniel Stillman is one of my favorite people to talk to about conversations (meta, I know) and now all of his wisdom and research is captured in this delightful, powerful book. The world would be a better place if more people were more confident when having important conversations, kudos to Daniel for his commitment to this cause.” – Abby Covert, Author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess, Senior Staff Information Architect, Etsy

“Good Talk is an essential guide to the awarenesses and skills that are the magic collaborative glue to mending the rifts between us so we can move forward. Daniel gifts us with this beautifully well written book at exactly the moment when we all most need it!” – Dawna Markova, Ph.D. Author of Living a Loved Life: Awakening Wisdom Through Stories of Inspiration, Challenge and Possibility and Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking With People Who think Differently, and Reconcilable Differences: Connecting in a Disconnected World

“An intriguing book and presents a powerful concept. By using the principles of design thinking, Daniel Stillman teaches you to design impactful conversations.” – Tendayi Viki, author of Pirates in the Navy and co-author of The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle

“When talking about gender, the conversation can be emotional and sometimes tricky to navigate. Daniel gets it. He’s written a book that will give you the insight you need to design events and interactions that can help you build community in a purposeful way.” – Claire Wasserman, founder of Ladies Get Paid