Here's an exercise via excerpt from the blog post I'd love to know if anyone has ever tried & get comments on:<p>"Here’s the problem: People just don’t know how to talk about what they’re going to talk about! Instead, they just start talking about it!
Not sure what I mean? Well, let me frame it for you. Whenever you participate in a conversation, there should really be two things you’re trying to do: #1) Understand what the framework of the conversation is, and #2) Communicate and receive specific points.
Everyone always jumps to point #2. Rarely do people even realize #1 exists. Here’s a concrete example: Next time you’re on a conference call, run a little test. Start the call by saying, “I’d like to go over our agenda. Here are all the things I’d like to cover on this call.” And list your items. When you’re done, ask, “are there any other topics that anyone wants to add to the agenda?”
Now, what you asked for were more agenda items. This goes to point #1 – the goal is to frame out what the conference call is going to be about. But often – very often – what you’ll get, instead, is that people will dive into specific items. It’s the most frustrating exercise, to realize the futility of it, and the difficulty that the human brain has in processing #1. People will say things like, “Well, I wanted to talk about XYZ. And the thing about XYZ is that….” and there they go – off talking about specific items when you were trying to frame out the agenda of the call. Try that test; I’d love to get your comments."