CleanTalk: 4 Ways of communicating

CLEAN TalkTM Four Ways to Catalyze Positive Performance

Learning Design & Capability Development for Leaders & Teams

www.susandegenring.com

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2010 Susan DeGenring www.susandegenring.com 2

2010 by Susan DeGenring. CLEAN Talk: Four Ways to Catalyze Positive Performance Clean TalkTM is a trademark of Susan DeGenring and Shadow Work Seminars All rights reserved. This work, or parts thereof, my not be reproduced in any form, including digital or photocopying, for internal use or for sale without written permission from the author. www.susandegenring.com


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

What is Clean Talk?

Why Should You Care?

Clean Talk Background

The Art of Conversation

4

Strategy Behind Clean Talk 7

How It Works

Four Channels of Communication

9

The Data Channel 13

The Assessment Channel 14

The Wants Channel 15

The Feelings Channel

Emotional Intelligence

Whats in a Feeling?

The Four Basic Emotions

16

Integration Clean Talk in Your Life

Six Steps for Developing Clean Talking Habits

Clean TalkTM Template

22


If you lead teams, collaborate on teams, are responsible for the professional

development of teams and leaders, or simply want to improve your own

leadership skills, this booklet is for you.

What is Clean TalkTM?

Clean TalkTM is a communications approach

specifically designed for expressing challenging

or difficult messages by using language to evoke

collaboration rather than compliance, proaction rather than

reaction, and agility rather than rigidity. The result highly

resilient work partnerships that produce positive performance.

Why should you care?

Speaking cleanly using language clean of emotional

triggers, imperious tones, or veiled accusation results in

more clarity and efficiency in situations in which you depend

on others to get the job done (which most of us do). Not being

thoughtful and strategic about our use of language can generate

resentment, resistance, or apathy in our colleagues and instill

an environment of fear and mistrust, especially by leaders with

influence and power.

On the other hand, in a world where executive and political scandal seem to erupt in the news

every other week, leadership transparency and authenticity are becoming more and more

valuable qualities. The ability to work well with others, handle pressure, get work done through

others these are all related to whether the language you use is congruent with the messages

people pick up. The context of the situation, your body language and your tone of voice all pack

into the meaning people make of your words. And these all elicit emotional responses, favorable

or not, in our listeners. Awareness of this directly impacts a leader or teammates performance.

This approach to

emotional

intelligence through

the lens of Clean Talk

will give you

practical ways to

manage your

conversations and

access emotion as a

lever of positive

performance.

INTR

OD

UCT

ION

CLEAN TALK FOUR WAYS TO CATALYZE POSITIVE PERFORMANCE


We have hard data to confirm this. In Daniel Golemans research on emotions in the workplace,

outlined in Working with Emotional Intelligence,1 he compared competency models across 121

organizations defining what makes for successful performance. The results are startling:

67% two out of three of the abilities deemed essential for effective performance were emotional competencies. Compared to IQ and expertise, emotional competence mattered twice as much. This held true across all categories of jobs, and in all kinds of organizations. (page 31)

So why do we cling to the illusion that emotions have no place at work? Given the evidence of

their importance as a performance success indicator, youd think wed pay more attention. But the

truth is that being effective and emotionally authentic in the workplace is more challenging that it

should be. I maintain its because we havent been well trained not in business school, not in

many of our families, not in our formative elementary educations. This approach to emotional

intelligence, through the lens of Clean Talk, will give you practical ways to manage your

conversations and access emotion as a lever of positive performance rather than ignore feelings

yours and those of others as if they dont exist or have no impact.

Clean Talk Background

Clean Talk began with the work of Cliff Barry, founder of Shadow Work Seminars. This brilliant

method of self-development, based partly on the works of psychologist Carl Jung, focuses on the

inner life of the leader. Together, Cliff and I refined the techniques and concepts of Clean Talk,

informed by my years of practical experience consulting to executives and teams on the capacity

to collaborate and succeed while working in highly matrixed or participative organizations.

Much has been written about the shadow which, broadly defined, includes both the functional

and dysfunctional parts of our personalities that we have hidden or repressed. Indeed the concept

has been popularized by the work of several well-known gurus and authors. I reveal this legacy of

Clean Talk not with a little trepidation as psychology, popularized as self-help, can be easily

misunderstood or trivialized, at best, and at worst, misapplied with damaging results.2

1 The concept of Emotional Intelligence has now been in the collective business dialogue for over 10 years, ever since Daniel Goleman wrote his groundbreaking book on the topic in 1997. And the research it was based had been collected for 25-30 years before that. His follow up research about EI in the work of work, was published in 1998 in Working with Emotional Intelligence.

2 As an example, its a very common misconception that the shadow refers only to the dark and destructive sides of us. Nothing could be further from the truth! Shadow simply means those aspects of our personality both golden and joyful as well as dysfunctional or destructive that for some reason, we have lost access to or control over. For more on the shadow go to www.shadowwork.com.


All of which I find a shame because the wisdom inherent in the understanding of shadow has

very practical and much needed applications in the world of work and collaboration.

The Art of Conversation

One such practical application is the art of conversation. All collaborative action, meaning

most work environments, are made up of thousands of conversations. And conversations are

imbued with emotionally evocative language. There is much media today devoted to the art of

conversation in the work arena and the world of personal relationship. Clean Talk, however, is a

little different in that it integrates what weve learned about emotional intelligence with how the

shadow leaks into and hijacks our conversations. Weve all been there: the meeting that

went drastically wrong, turning on the dime of one ill-composed statement. Or the fight with your

boss that resulted in alienation and your own disenfranchisement as a viable replacement

candidate for his position. Im sure you, reader, could list your own examples ad infinitum.

I wont go into much depth here about Shadow Work and its well-researched tradition and

broad applications. Most valuable to understand is simply that you can learn an extraordinary

amount about yourself, your colleagues and your work environment by looking through a human

systems lens. Im talking here about a particular type of lens, one that sees systems as made up of

archetypal behavior whether organizational, group or personal. The word archetype actually

means ancient patterns. We know from studying history, cultural legends, and other social

sciences that patterns of behavior persist across culture and time. And because of this, they

provide us with a very useful perspective into what works and doesnt as humans interact with

each other. Clean Talk applies this archetypal lens to the realm of communication and emotional

intelligence.

Lets look at how this approach works to catalyze positive performance.


THE STRATEGY BEHIND CLEAN TALK

As we go about our daily lives, most of us are unaware of that silent part of ourselves

constantly scanning incoming communications and observing events, searching out

potential threats. Some may feel it as intuition or that little voice that tips us off

when something is not quite right. Here well refer to this part as an internal radar

operator. Its constantly seeking, like a cell phone looking for signal. What signals

your internal radar picks up depends on whats lodged in your own threat bank,

your own neural data storage comprised of a life time of emotional responses to experience

some good, some great, some average, some bad, some really, really bad. Your data bank is

neutral. It doesnt evaluate, it just records, every single emotional response to every single thing

that ever happened to you gets permanently stored in there. When a signal comes back from your

internal radar operator that matches something in the data files, your synapses fire in your brain,

motivating behavior and language. It

happens faster than you can blink.

So, essentially, were like a world of

mobile phones constantly scanning,

bouncing our radar off each other.

Mostly, we pick up nothing threatening,

but then theres that moment a look, a

tone, a gesture that triggers a memory

in our own threat bank and off we go.

Simple example: When you walk into a

conference and notice that youre the

only one in the room wearing a suit, your

radar operator scans your threat bank

and stumbles upon emotional memory of

junior high school dances, and starts

sending you signals: youre

overdressed; you look too eager; you

stick out like a sore thumb; youre a loser; go back and change

Know that voice? We all have it. Its hardwired into our neural physiology. Its a key brain

function that helps keep us both psychologically and physically safe in the world. Although some

Internal Radar transmitting like cell phones

STRA

TEG

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of us no longer live in threat of our physical well-being on a daily basis, we have any number of

psychological pitfalls to navigate regularly in our busy modern lives rocky relationships, stress

at work, financial worries, growing older, taking care of family, etc.

So what, thats just life, right? Yes, and, when engaged in conversation with others, you are also

encountering their radar operators. Your speaking will have to make it through their defense

system. So, to communicate effectively, especially in times of over-stimulation, excitement or

stress (e.g., everyday for most of us working stiffs), you want to speak to people in ways that you

can be reasonably sure will avoid triggering your listeners internal radar operator and, even

better, elicit productive, collaborative responses improving working relationships all around.

Clean Talk is not for every conversation you have. Such constant self-monitoring would be crazy

making. So relax, youre causal conversation over a morning latt is safe!

Use Clean Talk when

youre feeling anxious because you have to provide difficult-to-deliver feedback.

youre discussing a topic with a lot at stake and, because of this, high emotional complexity.

youre in a meeting where its important for your message to be heard clearly and unambiguously.

you assess that a situation requires a calming and grounding influence.

you think a client or colleague will not want to hear what you have to say.


FOUR CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION

Clean Talk opens up trust and allows for more responsibility to be shared in

conversations and in the work you do together. The key is to speak through not one,

but four communication channels (see Figure 1):

Data/Facts Channel

Assessments/Judgments Channel

Wants/Requests Channel

Feelings/Emotions Channel

By channels we mean conduits through which information is transmitted by the speaker and

processed by the receiver. Being aware of these four channels creates less room for interpretive

error and helps avoid defensive responses. In this way, Clean Talk sets the environment for more

positive and productive performance.

Heres how it works. Each channel has common mis-speaks or errors we habitually make. These

habits of speaking can have detrimental effects on others, but also can affect our own frame of

mind. The following pages outline what each channel comprises and the common mis-speaks for

each to help you become a more effective communicator and build an environment for positive

performance using Clean Talk.

Note: Please take all these techniques and formats as guidelines to consider, not absolute

mandates for how you speak. The most important thing to understand are the strategies

underlying the techniques, not the specific terminology or format. All speaking is contextual and

my hope is that you will use this material to train your brain to assess or see your leadership and

team situations through these lenses and make context specific choices about how you apply the

techniques.

See CLEAN Talk model on the next page.

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This CLEAN Talk framework can be used in three ways:

To analyze a situation for more understanding and self-awareness.

To plan a difficult conversation.

To conduct a difficult conversation.

CLEAN Talk Four Channels of Communication

Data/Facts

Feelings/Emotions

Wants/Requests

Assessments/Judgments

CLEAN TALK

Figure 1


Data/Facts

This is the information that contains an exact description of the behavior or words in question. It

is factual evidence that you can clearly describe. This is what you can see and hear as a video

recorder would data without interpretation. In a conversation between two people, the facts are

one of the few things people might agree on. Almost everything else is subjective and open to

interpretation.

Assessments/Judgments

This channel carries your assessments, critical

judgments, perceptions, opinions or beliefs. It is

useful to understand it as such. This is not

necessarily the truth about anything; it is merely

what you find yourself thinking. The key to this

channel is to own these as your assessments rather

than stating them as fact or feeling.

Wants/Requests

This is what you want or would like for yourself or

your team. Expressing what you want gives the

listener a better understanding of what action could

be taken to satisfy your issues or concerns. It also

indicates that youre willing to take some

responsibility for engaging in resolution rather than

just complaining. It does not carry with it, however,

any guarantee that you will actually get what you

want. It is simply the expression of the want.

However, the more measurable and specific you can

be in describing what you want, the better chance you have of getting it.

Emotions/Feelings

This is your emotional check-in. With feeling statements, you want to indicate the state of your

emotions as they impact or are affected by the situation. The key here is not to accuse another

person of causing your emotional state, but rather to recognize your feeling state and to own it.

Most feeling states boil down to one of these four primal feelings: happy, sad, angry, or afraid.

There are many other derivatives, however these often move the speaker up another level of

The ability to demonstrate

empathy, take initiative, or

pursue goals despite obstacles

and set backs are more than

just soft skills. They are

increasingly critical every day

that our world becomes bigger

and more complex. More

diversity, more global

relationships, more tightly

intersecting economies all

require an ability to adapt and

flex to account for less and less

predictability.


interpretation, and cross back into the Assessment/Judgment Channel. It is easier to keep your

communication clean by labeling your feelings using one of the basic four as youll have a better

chance of experiencing them cleanly yourself without critical interpretation.

We had the experience but missed the

meaning / And approach to the

meaning restores the experience in a

different form.

from The Dry Salvages in

T.S. Eliots Four Quartets


THE DATA CHANNEL

Data, Facts, Instances, Behaviors

This is the information you provide that contains an exact description of the behavior

or words in question. It is factual evidence that you can clearly describe, almost as if a

video camera had recorded them.

In order for people to evaluate, agree with or propose other options to you, its critical as a leader

that you give them, not just your point of view, but also the data its based on. Data is objective

and opinion-neutral, or as close to neutral as you can get. But thats easier said than done.

Common Mis-Speaks in the Data Channel

Bleeding over from other channels. Misrepresenting information from another channel as data, i.e., representing an assessment, a judgment or even a feeling as data. Example: I

feel annoyed that you are rocking the boat without any good reason. (Feelings

masquerading as data.)

Leaving out the data. Not providing any data at all to back up your opinions. Example: Global warming is a worldwide phenomenon. Or The client really isnt interested in the

Consequence Mitigation part of the package were trying to sell them.

Of course this mis-speak is really inconsequential if all youre doing is having a casual

conversation in which no one really cares about the impact or outcome. But when it counts,

when budget or policy decisions, profits or work processes depend on people agreeing on how

to move forward, being careful about the data you base your statements on is very important.

DAT

A


THE ASSESSMENTS CHANNEL

Assessments, Judgments, Interpretations, Perceptions, Conclusions

This channel carries your assessments, critical judgments, perceptions, opinions or

beliefs its what you find yourself thinking in response to a situation or the behavior

of others. Unfortunately, we often speak as if our points of view, opinions or

experience is fact. Its not fact. You are not the all-knowing, all-seeing arbiter of what

is and isnt true. (I know it can come as a shock to some of us!). The problem is, what

one person sees as a healthy delicious meal of raw cabbage and boiled potatoes,

another would find completely distasteful. What one person sees as a reasonable

budget surplus another sees as an inefficient work process. Different assessments of

the same data.

However, sharing your opinions is an important aspect of collaboration and getting quality work

done. Its also useful for people to know you and what youre thinking about, especially as a

leader. It helps them navigate their own work and understand you better. Just dont make the

mistake of assuming because this is how you perceive it, that everyone you work with sees the

same thing.

Common Mis-Speaks in the Assessment Channel

Stating opinion as fact. Representing, as fact, information that is simply our point of view. This is the flip side of the coin for some Data mis-speaks. Example: You havent taken

in the seriousness of this situation. (Based on what? This is your assessment being stated as

data, with no actual data provided.)

Embedding accusations in your own perceptions. Making accusations about others behavior or actions, and the motivation behind them, as if they were indisputable fact.

Example: You always want me to clean up after your mess! (Again, based on what? This is

your assessment being stated as data, with no actual data provided.

ASSE

SSM

ENTS


THE WANTS CHANNEL

Wants, Requests, Likes, Desires

This is what you want or would like from another person or group of people that will

help move things in a positive direction. Often we are much more aware of what we

dont want rather than what we want or request for forward action. The dilemma is

that focusing mostly on what we dont want or whats not working, can have two

negative consequences: 1) its hard for others to take affirmative action on a negative want, and 2)

it can drain emotional energy because you risk setting others up with the responsibility for fixing

your discontentment. Especially as leaders, people can resent this or fall short of your

expectations for what will work for you. The more concrete you can be about what your request is,

the better chance you have of results satisfaction. And more results satisfaction makes everyone

happier.

Common Mis-speaks in the Wants Channel

Negative wants. Saying what you dont want instead of what you do want. Negative wants allow you to avoid taking responsibility for what will work for you and keep you wedged into a

negative or victimized state.

Disowned or co-dependent wants. Saying what you want for others instead of what you want for yourself. This is another form of unconsciously taking yourself (or your team) out of

the picture and setting up a situation where you end up feeling dissatisfied. Example: (You

work in sales) I want marketing to have more resources to contribute. (And, what do you

want for sales, how will marketing having more resource support your objectives?)

Vague wants. Describing your wants in general terminology. Often, as a leader, youre not providing quite enough for people to act on when being too general or open. It is an art to

provide the vision or strategy of what your direction is without micromanaging or

overprescribing. Example: I really want our customers to experience supreme service.

(Thats great. But what kind of supreme service? And with what trade-offs in priorities? Or

what resources are available to support this?)

WAN

TS


THE FEELINGS CHANNEL

Emotions, Feelings

Having emotions is unavoidable. They are hard-wired into our survival capacity and

are a physiological response. Pretending they are not there, or trying to change them is

futile. Rather, acknowledge them and use them, as appropriate, to clarify your own

reactions or behaviors.

If you really think carefully about this topic, youll realize that you are communicating

your emotions whether or not you intend to. Body language, which we cant see being

transmitted, betrays us far more than what we say. So we might as well take some modicum of

control over how our emotions are communicated and impact others.

So, this channel is your emotional check-in. With

feeling statements, you want to indicate the state of

your emotions as they impact or are affected by the

situation. The key is to recognize your feeling state and

to own it. As I stated in the Introduction, the field of

emotional intelligence has brought great clarity to this

soft topic of feelings. Its very important to de-mystify

emotions and their impact in the workplace. So lets

delve a bit into this material.

Emotional Intelligence A different way of being smart.

Emotional intelligence is defined as how we manage emotions in ourselves and others. I will

briefly bring in Goleman again, whom I believe has brilliantly defined and simplified the

confusing territory around emotions. According to Goleman, there are two kinds of competencies

that contribute to emotional intelligence personal competence and social competence.3

Understanding how each set of these competencies plays out will support you as a leader, both in

using your own emotions for positive impact, as well as in supporting others to manage their own.

3 From Working with Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Bantam Books, October, 1998, pp. 26-27.

FEEL

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Were not thinking beings

who feel. Were feeling

beings who think.

from the BBC documentary,

The Secret Life of the Brain


Personal Competence

These competencies determine how we manage ourselves.

Self-Awareness: Knowing ones internal states, preferences, and resources.

This includes: recognizing own emotions and their effects, knowing ones strengths and

limitations, having a strong sense of ones self worth and capabilities.

Self-Regulation: Managing ones internal states, impulses and resources.

This includes: keeping destructive impulses in check, flexibility in handling change, being

comfortable with novel ideas and new info, maintaining standards of honesty and integrity.

Motivation: Emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals.

This includes: aligning with the goals of the group or organization, striving to improve or

meet a standard of excellence, persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles.

Social Competence

These competencies determine how we handle relationships.

Empathy: Awareness of others feelings, needs, and concerns. This includes: sensing others feeling and perceptions and taking an active interest in their

concerns, reading the power relationships in a group, supporting others in getting their needs

met.

Social Skills: Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others. This includes: working with others in pursuing collective goals, listening openly, sending

convincing messages, negotiating and resolving disagreements.

In reading through these lists, theres no doubt in my mind that, from my experience in the

organizational world, most people I know (including myself) can always improve in these areas.


Inability to demonstrate empathy, or to take initiative, or to pursue goals despite obstacles and set

backs are more than just soft skills. They are increasingly critical every day that our world

becomes bigger and more complex. More diversity, more global relationships, more tightly

intersecting economies all require an ability to adapt and flex to account for less and less

predictability. This is true for all workers, but especially for leaders.

So lets work on getting even more fundamental and concrete about feelings. The following

information identifies the four basic feeling states, defines them and identifies emotionally

intelligent actions to take in working with each.

Whats in a Feeling?

Feelings are states of being that act as indicators. These indicators point to important underlying

dynamics that influence peoples actions. Being able to recognize feelings provides valuable

information for managing performance and interpersonal situations.

And, feelings are much easier to recognize and deal with if you have only a few to chose from.

There are four primary feelings in which most other feeling states are rooted angry, afraid, sad,

and happy. (As I said before, other disciplines identify more than four. We consider these the four

the basic archetypal emotions out of which the others grow.) Recognizing these feeling states is

the first step in developing competence to support yourself and others in communicating cleanly.

The charts on the following pages illustrate the four basic emotions, what causes them, and

actions you can take (on your own behalf or to support another) to manage them by:

(i) simply acknowledging the feeling state,

(ii) transforming it into something more productive or positive, or

(iii) creating conditions for the situation to evolve appropriately.


FEELING STATE:

ANGRY Caused by limits being transgressed or barriers being imposed that violate your interests and needs, or those of your group.

o Set boundaries

Draw a line to protect your interests, e.g., state how much time you can commit to a project and how much you cannot.

o Change boundaries

Adjust your limits to better suit the requirements you think are important, e.g., I can no longer drive 100km each way to work everyday, but I am willing to do it 3 days a week and telecommute the rest of the time.

o Remove boundaries

Lift constraints from a situation to release tension and free up creativity, e.g., tell a team they can disregard, temporarily, existing quality constraints while pursuing a difficult production breakdown.

ACTIONS TO TAKE:

AFRAID Caused by something coming that you think will harm you or that you dont want.

o Retreat and wait for a better t ime

Fear is an important emotion, telling you that something is not safe. Its an invaluable source of input or intuition, e.g., delaying confronting an adversary until you have more political and emotional support.

o Face the issue/fight back

Taking on your fear often helps minimize or eradicate the boogeyman nature of fear, e.g., finally taking that public speaking course.

Other words: frustrated, humiliated, annoyed, irritated

Other words: anxious, apprehensive, frightened

THE FOUR BASIC EMOTIONS


FEELING STATE:

SAD Caused by losing something important to you, sometimes very subtle, sometimes very overt.

o Acknowledge loss

Allow the feeling to be present and acknowledge that its legitimate to feel the loss, e.g., when a project youve worked long and hard on has been canceled that.

o Cut your losses

Acknowledge that something has been lost, but take action to prevent further loss, e.g., when needing to cut the budget, restructure so that existing personnel can be protected.

o Retrieve something

After acknowledging the loss, find something else to take its place, e.g., when losing a job, doing volunteer work to replace the sense of purpose, while searching for new employment.

ACTIONS TO TAKE:

Other words: grief, melancholy, sorrow

HAPPY Caused by getting something you want that satisfies and provides joy.

o Pay attention and notice

To often in striving to get things done, we only see whats going wrong and fail to notice the good, e.g., when we hit a milestone in a project.

o Celebrate!

There are so many reasons to be anxious and fretful in a busy life, making it ever more important to stop to acknowledge and celebrate the good and beneficial, e.g., giving small but meaningful tokens of appreciation for a job well done. These acts of celebration insert energy and vitality into a team or partnership and build healthy, resilient relationships.

Other words: glad, thrilled, excited


Common Mis-Speaks in the Feelings Channel

Accusing someone else of creating your internal feeling state, e.g., You made me feel. While others clearly impact our experience, and can influence what we feel,

empowering them with the capacity to make you feel in any particular way fully

disempowers both you and your ability to manage your emotions. So even if your employee

habitually makes you mad with his irritating habits, taking responsibility for your own

emotional reaction is the intelligent thing to do. Because, truth is, the same behavior

exhibited by the same employee (data) might make someone else happy. So, looked at in

that light, its awfully difficult to avoid the conclusion that its your threat profile thats being

activated. Which means its your responsibility to manage your emotions. Sorry

Using feeling to indicate an assessment or judgment, e.g., I feel like. This is extremely common phraseology used in the English language I feel like you should have

known better. Or, I feel like weve been able to solve this problem before, and now are

stumped. This is your assessment masquerading as a feeling. Its not that its greatly

problematic to do this accept if this is your habit, you run the risk of surreptitiously confusing

what you are thinking with what you are feeling. And that can make it difficult to pierce the

cognitive veil that sometimes surrounds our feelings. Also, its a bit sloppy and, somehow, a

bit soft I think. Communicate feelings when there are feelings and assessments when there

are assessments, and youll be much easier to understand and work with.


CLEAN TALK IN YOUR LIFE

Congratulations! Youre on your way to cleaner communication. Now comes the

integration into your work and life.

Clean Talk is based on this premise: in any complex discussion, all four channels of

communication Data, Assessments, Wants, and Feelings are present and active.

Transmissions are running through each channel and people are picking them up,

whether you intend to be transmitting them or not. So, the question is not if theyre

active, but whether youre controlling what youre communicating through them.

Actors are stellar at this. They have learned to track and actively modulate what they

communicate and through which channel. We dont all have to be trained in Strasbergs Method

Acting to be successful communicators. Just a little concerted effort to practice Clean Talk will do.

One important tip: as you continue practicing in conversations that are challenging or difficult,

try to speak through as many of the channels as you can. That will provide the most clarity for

your listener. This may not always be possible or appropriate. Use your common sense. But when

you leave out a channel for example, data, you could be opening the conversation to mis-

interpretation and misunderstanding.

The tools on the following pages will aide you in both preparing for and practicing Clean Talk.

A Note about Email

Email is a communications nightmare for so many reasons we write while multitasking, we hit

the Send button too soon, we dont review before sending, we write when were reactive, etc. Its

one of the most challenging formats in which to have your message interpreted the way you

meant it. Everything Ive said in the previous 30 pages goes double for email. Clean Talk is the

perfect tool for writing clear, emotionally clean emails. Try it using the Clean TalkTM Preparation

Worksheets on pages 34-37 to guide you.

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SIX STEPS FOR DEVELOPING CLEAN TALKING HABITS

1. First, notice and separate out the Four Channels as you listen to others

speaking.

2. Then, begin hearing and seeing Mis-Speaks. Treat it like a game. Theyre

everywhere! (CSPAN is a great place to see massively, egregious mis-

speaks).

3. Journal or note for yourself what mis-speaks you are most prone to.

4. Practice addressing these by using Clean Talk techniques in low-risk

situations.

5. Pick and plan some challenging conversations by writing out the hard parts of

what you want to say using the template on the next page.

6. Talk cleanly when it counts! Remember, you dont have to do it all the time,

just when the stakes are high.

TOO

LS


CLEAN TALKTM TEMPLATE

The following template can be used as a guideline for practicing when you first

begin integrating all the channels together. Eventually you will find your own

natural style and language. Using this exact format is not as important as

employing the techniques based on the principles outlined in this booklet.

Happy talking!

TOO

LS


WANT MORE?

If you would like more information about Clean Talk, would like some coaching in using Clean

Talk, or would like to set up a Clean Talk workshop for your organization, please contact:

Learning Design & Capability Development for Leaders & Teams

O: 720.494.7794 M: 970.215.2485

www.susandegenring.com

www.susandegenring.com/blog [email protected]


ABOUT SUSAN DeGENRING

Susan DeGenring is a learning designer, leadership

development coach, graphic recorder and web-based

instructional designer/facilitator specializing in collaborative

capability development and scalable, blended learning design.

Her purpose is to make knowledge and skill more accessible

through best-in-class instructional design and productizing and

branding powerful learning experiences. She works with

organizations to build learning programs for leaders, teams,

coaches and change agents to achieve positive, long-term

behavior change over time and develop their capacity for authentic, responsible leadership.

Experience

When you partner with Susan DeGenring you have access to 20 years experience and content

expertise including:

consulting to large organizations on creating customized, blended leadership development programs

conducting comprehensive executive coaching programs in Fortune 500 and not-for-profit organizations

building turnkey products and services from concept-to-customer for developing leadership, team, and facilitator competencies

transferring classroom training to highly engaging web-based learning

facilitating leaders and teams toward improved collaboration and performance

designing and facilitating retreats to build alignment and facilitate problem solving for strategic and operational planning

Her work is known globally through leadership, coaching, team and facilitation curricula she has

built and implemented for international organizations. These programs have been trained by

Susan and licensed worldwide by other consultants, trainers and coaches.

Documents

CleanTalk: 4 Ways of communicating