Once you’ve recorded your conversation in the two-column format, follow these steps to Reflect on your curiosity, transparency, conversational patterns, and use of key skills we describe in the book.

1.Curiosity: Determine your Question Fraction.

a.Circle all the question marks in the right-hand column.

b.Count the number of questions that were genuine.

c.Write a fraction: Genuine QuestionsTotal Questions.

d.For maximum curiosity, you want to see lots of questions (a large denominator), with most of them genuine (a large numerator).

2.Transparency: Find unexpressed ideas.

a.Underline thoughts and feelings in the left-hand column that do not appear in the right-hand column.

b.You have been very transparent if you have expressed most of your thinking and your emotions (that is, if you have few underlined sentences in the left-hand column).

3.Patterns: Find triggers, tells, and twitches.

a.Circle and label triggers that cause you to react strongly, tells that signal a lack of transparency or curiosity, and twitches that represent default responses.

b.You probably can’t avoid the automatic responses you identify here, but you can learn to detect them as they happen. You are doing well if you note your patterns in real time, either in your left-hand column or in your dialogue.

4.Skills: Test for specific skills you are trying to improve (choose from the list of skills below, and only work on one at a time).

a.TDD for People: Label your statements and questions in either column with the rung from the Ladder of Inference to which they belong. You’re doing well if you’re establishing a shared understanding of the lower rungs of the Ladder before debating items near the top the Ladder.

b.Coherence Busting: Count the unsupported conclusions in the left-hand column. Aim for a low score—ideally, none!

c.Joint Design: Award a point for each of the five elements of Joint Design that you observe: inclusivity, asking genuine questions, inviting opposing views, timeboxing, and using a decision-making rule. Aim for five out of five.

d.Agreeing on Meaning: Circle the important words in both columns, then count the number that have confirmed, shared meanings. Create a fraction: Words with Comfirmed, Shared MeaningsImportant Words. Ideally, this fraction will be equal to 1 (the numerator equals the denominator).

e.Briefing and Back Briefing: As appropriate, score yourself out of three: for a briefing, look for outcome, constraints, and freedoms; for a back briefing, watch for action, reasoning, and confirmation. Your goal should be a score of 33.