Your Change The Conversation Toolkit

We are so grateful that you’re joining us to not only create a ripple, but a tidal wave of positive change.

Before you dive in, we wanted to just make sure you have the latest research on creating positive change at your fingertips so that you can be successful.

Your Positive Change Ah-Ha;s

Before you dive in, we wanted to just make sure you have the latest research on creating positive change at your fingertips so that you can be successful.. Check out the Ah-ha’s below.

1. Change The Language

Researchers have identified the need for common language as an essential ingredient when it comes to caring for our wellbeing, so that conversations about what enables us to thrive and what causes us to struggle can cascade through our homes, our workplaces and our community. By changing the discourse about a topic like wellbeing, you can positively impact the topic itself.  As our words create worlds, the first step towards creating positive change is focusing on the words that we want to grow as part of our everyday conversations.

2. Norm The Conversation

The simplest way of scaling change more broadly is to talk about it. The more we talk about it, the more legitimacy it holds. However, to spread the conversation well, we need to develop simple, sticky language.

Some siblings just play extraordinarily well together. Like brothers Chip and Dan Heath who co-authored Made To Stick. They found these simple traits which all sticky ideas share:

  • Sticky ideas are always unexpected. Novelty and surprise are our core brain’s needs.
  • Use curiosity gaps to keep your listener’s attention. Present powerful facts, figures and questions as your opening line, and you’ll have poked your audience’s interest.
  • The best way to get your ideas to stick is to tell great stories. What are some personal experiences of physical distance + social connection during quarantine that you can share to demonstrate you get it?
3. Scaling Questions

Every action is proceeded by a question. That means that before each step we take, there is a conscious, or unconscious, question that shapes our next steps. If we want to have conversations that spark change and take a generative approach (helping people see old things in new ways), then we need to get conscious and intentional about the questions we’re asking.

4. Feedback Loops

Feedback loops – the means by which a system talks to itself – hold the key to ensuring a living system continues receiving and connecting information inside and outside, at the top and at the bottom, and across and within the system, to prompt self-organization in ways that support its resilience and growth.

Like a thermostat in a house, feedback loops continually guard a system against being “too hot” or “too cold” by signalling deviations from the goal and providing information to help a system speed up, slow down, or hold steady when it comes to its approach to creating change. Feedback loops can be formal (e.g. surveys) or informal (e.g. conversations) but should always be diverse so you can track and fan the flames of positive change as needed.

For example, Professor Warren Nillson recommends considering the social field – the quality of relationships out of which a system grows – by asking: “What are people saying?” “What does the climate feel like?” “What’s working well?” “What needs healing to move forward?” “What’s emerging?” and “What do we want to build for our shared future?”

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Researchers have identified the need for common language as an essential ingredient when it comes to caring for our wellbeing, so that conversations about what enables us to thrive and what causes us to struggle can cascade through our homes, our workplaces and our community. By changing the discourse about a topic like wellbeing, you can positively impact the topic itself.  As our words create worlds, the first step towards creating positive change is focusing on the words that we want to grow as part of our everyday conversations.

Researchers have identified the need for common language as an essential ingredient when it comes to caring for our wellbeing, so that conversations about what enables us to thrive and what causes us to struggle can cascade through our homes, our workplaces and our community. By changing the discourse about a topic like wellbeing, you can positively impact the topic itself.  As our words create worlds, the first step towards creating positive change is focusing on the words that we want to grow as part of our everyday conversations.

Your Positive Change Invitation

Help us seed the language of change by planting the words “physical distance + social connection” anywhere and everywhere you can.

Invitation: Change The Language

Help us seed the language of change by planting the words “physical distance + social connection” anywhere and everywhere you can this week. Let’s see if we can begin to invite people into a different conversation.

Invitation: Norm The Conversation

Help us norm the conversation about social connection during the time of physical distancing. Feel in your bones the value of this distinction. Teach it where you can, embed it where it makes sense (we’ve been posting the images we shared last week wherever we can provide an environmental nudge to remind others) and live it each day. Tell those stories!

Invitation: Scaling Questions

Spark generativity in your conversations about physical distance + social connection to help people leave conversations about “social distancing” behind. With a well-crafted, generative question, you can also help them take action, and create more joyful social connections.

Invitation: Feedback Loops

To reignite the larger conversation that values physical distance + social connection as the best way to care for our wellbeing.

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Help us seed the language of change by planting the words “physical distance + social connection” anywhere and everywhere you can this week. Let’s see if we can begin to invite people into a different conversation.

Help us seed the language of change by planting the words “physical distance + social connection” anywhere and everywhere you can this week. Let’s see if we can begin to invite people into a different conversation.

To help you, we have created the Positive Change Toolkit.
Small, quick actions you can take (and share) all at the click of a button.

Nudge your leaders – Ask three leaders and/or news organizations in your country to change their language from â€social distancing’ to â€physical distancing’ by sharing why the change in language matters for our wellbeing. To make it easy, you’ll find a tweet to share as well as a list of people you may want to reach out to. Just click the button and hit â€tweet now’.

Social media images – spread the message by posting one (or all) of our beautifully designed social images across your networks to help normalize the language in playful and creative ways.

Keep the conversation alive – don’t be limited by our creativity! Any way that you can continue to ask, nudge, or celebrate the use of â€physical distance + social connection’ over the coming weeks and months will be needed. Remember to help keep the conversation playful, curious and generative.

Social Media Profile Image – seed the language with your family and friends by changing your social media portrait just for this week to by using these images:

Poster For Your Windows – seed the language in your neighborhood by printing these posters and popping it in your front windows.

Sign the Change Media Petition – seed the language in daily news stories by signing the digital petition for news editors around the world and asking others to do the same.

Share the Change Media Petition – seed the language in daily news stories by sharing the digital petition across your networks

A Song to Make People Smile – spread the message with the help of one of our favorite furry friends about what the world needs now.

A Guide For the New Normal Handshake – invite people to share their views on what the new workplace handshake should be so we can maintain physical distance whilst being socially connected. Download to see what the future could look like and then forward it to 5 colleagues to see what they think it should be.

Socially Connected Poem – spread the message by posting this poem across your social networks to help normalize the language. 

Playful questions play sheet – we’ve created a number of playful questions for different situations that you can use to help change the conversation.

AI Summit Participant Guide – Grab our free Appreciative Inquiry Workshop guide to help your teams co-create what they want their new normal of work to look like.

AI Summit Participant Report – Grab our free Appreciative Inquiry Workshop Report to see what 100’s of people around the world co-created what the new normal would look like in workplaces.