Fred Dust on Making Conversation: Seven Essential Elements of Meaningful Communication

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host Jessica and today Tom is joined by Fred Dest author of the new book Making Conversations, seven essential elements of meaningful communication. Fred is a former senior partner and global managing director at the legendary design

firm IDEO and in his new book he shows how to design conversations in meetings that are creative and impactful. He also sent in as he talks to Tom about the four pillars of conversation, where conversation interconnects with design and how we can do a better job of giving these skills to young people.

Fred Dest, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. Tom, thanks for having me. It’s really great to have you. Congratulations on making conversation your terrific new book. Thank you and congratulations on not calling me Fred Dest, which is what mostly people

do. Fred, you’ve been in that creative space a long time and have been an advocate for design and design thinking. I think it’s more important than ever. What about you?

I think generally speaking, creativity and embracing the notion that we’re all makers is kind of fundamental and it’s really at the core of the work that I’m doing right now is thinking about making every hard conversation kind of thinking about how you make that happen. Think about it as a creative act. I think it’s probably the most important thing we should be doing right now.

I guess one thing that strikes me about the crazy year that we have experienced globally is now it’s very clear that we’re in this buca world, this world full of novelty and complexity and that what young people can expect is the unexpected. I so appreciate you and other early leaders in design and design thinking for giving us a structured problem-solving approach on how to have a set of tools when we walk into the

unknown. No, I appreciate that. One of the things I’ve always cared about is not just that we have it but that that toolkit is equally distributed. When I was in New York, I used to have my people, I’d train them by having them go teach

classes at the Harlem school zone because I wanted people who wouldn’t get exposed to this to learn because it’s a really, Tom, I’ll tell you one of the things I don’t love is the word resilience. I’m not interested in raising resilient children. I’m really interested in raising courageous and creative children, children who feel like

they can actually really aspire to do things. I think creativity and learning to make and keeping that in your soul helps you do that. It’s a big piece of my thinking and the work I do. Fred, until I read your book, I had never really, it’s ironic, but I never really connected conversation and design thinking.

But almost every step of design thinking involves a conversation or a set of conversations. Is that fair? Yeah. It’s really interesting. One of the things that I talk about, Tom, in the book is the book has seven C’s which

are really basically the components of how to make a great conversation. It ends with creation, which is I think the thing that focuses the most on the way you think about design. But every step of the way, you have to have a conversation that’s advancing your thinking so you can actually get something into the world in a really significant way.

Just for those of you who may not know or understand design thinking or design, or it’s like one of the things I often say about design, at its simplest level, design is just thinking very carefully about the things you put into the world, which we all need to be doing every day. I mean, it’s like, what needs to happen?

What needs to be put there? Is it going to help us? Is it going to help the world? Yeah. And to think with empathy about the people that might encounter it.

And in what way it can be a gift to them. Yeah. No, it’s really funny. I mean, so weirdly, you’re going to find this weird. And there was an ex-democratic presidential candidate who once fought me on this.

I often use the word love because I actually think if you get to love, then you actually will get to empathy. But if you start with empathy, you might get to understanding. If you get to understanding, then you might start, you might get to disagreement. So by going high, we try to aim for the empathy, which I think is the right thing to do.

Really quickly, Tom, one of the things that was really interesting for me when I was working over at IDEO is that I experienced one team specifically that was working with a really remarkable client. I’m a really great client. I was a hospitality client.

And I could tell that the team didn’t really like the consumer. They didn’t like the people who were staying at this hotel because they were asking questions and judging in kind of a bad way. They would be like, don’t you think the lights in here are too bright? And they’re like, no, I can finally see my work.

And they’d be like, no, you’re wrong. And I’d be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And so I actually had to stop that team halfway through and be like, do what you need to do to learn how to fall in love with these guests. And then we’ll come, we’ll restart the work at that point.

So anyway, little, little work story of it. I love that. It reminds me of my friend Larry Rosenstock. My friend Caleb Rashad went to went to work for Larry at High Tech High. And Larry said, his simple advice, he said, spend a few days falling in love with people here.

Right. What a gift, right? Well, that does sound like a very smart set of advice. And I think that’s right. Like it’s like, it’s the best we can do.

Fred, congrats on this great book. It’s called Making Conversation, Seven Essential Elements of Meaningful Communication. I think this is the only book that I’ve ever read on the subject. This could be a personal problem that I haven’t read very broadly. But it’s interesting.

I guess I, and I’m not, I don’t recall the origin story of what prompted a book on the subject of conversation specifically. Well, there’s a couple of things. So, you know, let’s, we’re going to, we’ll skip ahead to the end of my career at IDEO, which was, I had spent about eight years working on a practice called Systems at Scale.

Within that was our Design for Education platform. So Sandy Speicher, who is the CEO of IDEO now, which is awesome. Where’s the total rock star? She’s amazing rock star. I adore Sandy.

But so Sandy worked for me or with me. I mean, I like, we were all part of the same practice. I was the one who founded it. But Sandy, the person who ran our nonprofit, Jocelyn, we founded that out of our nonprofit, IDEO.org out of our nonprofit, out of that group.

And then most of my work was with philanthropic media and government. So I worked a lot with the Obama administration, worked with Elizabeth Warren, things like that. And my last real client was the then- Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who is now our Surgeon General again. In fact, he’ll be interviewing me next week on South by Southwest.

So at South by Southwest. But he, he was about to issue a crisis, an epidemic of isolation and loneliness in America. And what I was doing with him was really working to design the gatherings, the town halls, that we both built, kind of get that information out into the world, learn things, but also be cathartic and bring communities together in a really powerful way.

And so I would say about the last year of that administration, I was mostly thinking about tools for having constructive and positive dialogue. So things that were replaced debate that I stole from combinations of drama and kindergarten schools and create attentions, which is literally, you do it in kindergarten, is a really good at it. And, and, hunch hour, a whole bunch of different methodologies that we built.

My premise being that dialogue was going to be fundamental to the kind of curing of the world, or the curing of America that time. And so really quickly, I turned that I wrote the proposal for my book the same time Vivek wrote his proposal. Our book sold at the same time to the same publisher.

His came out on the health side. Mine came out in the business and to-do side, or how to see how to side. And, and I paused my book because I was like, I could see a pandemic coming in December. And I was like, let’s wait for a year. So, so my book is a year later than his, but I sort of feel like it’s kind of call and

response in a lot of ways. But we would be, you know, really quickly taught us just sort of funny. It’s like, but it’s like, we’d be on calls and he’d be like, I can’t believe I’m writing about isolation. It’s the most isolating I’ve ever been.

I sort of been and I’m like, I’m running about conversation and it’s the most conversational I’ve ever been in my entire life. So it’s like, it’s kind of different. Well, it is. It’s funny when you write a book, you never know, like where it’s going to land in the world.

And in terms of the sweep of history, I wrote a book called the power of place with a couple colleagues and it came out the day that WHO declared a global pandemic. And the book was, the book was on community as classroom. And suddenly, you know, little did we know that suddenly learning was in the was, was in the, was in a community that suddenly schools were closed worldwide.

And we hadn’t quite written it for that, but it had some relevance. So. Yeah, it does. I mean, it’s funny when I, when I had to write a chapter in March about how to, how the Harvard is hard as conversations during a pandemic.

And I was like, oh, I think context doesn’t really matter anymore. And I was like, oh, no, context really matters. Even it’s like really fascinating. So, yeah. No, I totally appreciate that.

I want to come back to that because the book starts with commitment. This to me struck me as the least intuitive of the seven C’s. Why does a good conversation or clear communication? Why does it start with commitment? Yeah, I’ll tell you a funny story about that one.

So I originally, the book was called the conversational palette. Actually, the original, the book was called design and dialogue. And like my publisher was like, you can’t say that we’re designed. You can’t say that we’re dialogue. So it’s why it’s called conversation.

But and I was giving a lecture on what I called them the six C’s, the conversational palette. And I had six C’s and I had all of them, but I didn’t have one. And so at the end of my lecture, somebody raised their hand and they’re like, what happens if somebody just hits me right off the bat and doesn’t want to talk to me? And I was like, oh, right, that can happen.

And so I basically was like, I pulled this out of my back pocket. I was like, well, what you do is you just commit to the person, commit to the conversation first and hold your values a little more lightly. And then you’ll gradually make your way through the conversation that you need to have. So after that, I suddenly had my first chapter, which was commitment.

And it’s something that really is surprisingly powerful. You know, the notion that we’re like, we’re on this call right now, we’re committed to each other for at least this hour. And that’s it. That’s where our heads are. That’s where we’re connected.

And that means we’ll have the conversation we need to be having. So the second chapter is on clarity. That one strikes me as pretty intuitive, but not for everybody. The chapter was a great reminder to be a little metacognitive about what you’re communicating, how you’re communicating it, to whom you’re communicating.

Is that fair? Yeah, it is. And I think it really relates to yours. So it’s actually the third chapter, but I think we should be jumping around. I think it’s like a little bit. What it is, is this is actually this chapter, this is funny.

Everyone wants C’s. That’s what my publisher wanted. This chapter was originally called Talk Normal, because this is actually how when I would usually lecture, I would just be like, talk normal, use every opportunity to talk normal. And I don’t know, Tom, if you remember the chapter, in the first paragraph, I used the word obfuscates. And I’m like, yeah, I probably could.

That was a good one. No, right. But next edition, we’ll catch up. But it’s like, my feeling is you’d be surprised all the places where we’re not clear on terms. So I’m an architect by training. We like expert language.

Expert language kind of often hides the truth. So our really classic example is in architecture, we’ll say, oh, here’s an intervention. And what we really mean is that here’s a window, or here’s a bench, or here’s something that’s kind of changing the space. And I’m like, why don’t we just say, here’s a window?

You know, why don’t we just say, here’s a bench? And so when I left architecture and went to IDEO, I was adamant that our designers learned to talk as normal as possible, that we didn’t use expert design language, that we didn’t do it. And I was also adamant that that was the case with healthcare workers and other kind of workers,

academicians, really need to think about this in a lot of ways. And I will tell you one thing that is interesting to call out. So I originally kind of came across this concept construct when I was doing a work in an emergency room and realized that about half of the room didn’t know what the word triage meant, which meant that they couldn’t get access.

And so I said to all the healthcare workers, I was like, I was like, you need to talk, talk normal. And what that does and doesn’t mean is this, if I’m not an expert in healthcare, then you need to talk normally to me so that I can understand what you’re saying. However, you don’t want two doctors or two surgeons in the surgery saying, give me the sharp thing that I can cut someone open with to use whatever you want them to say, scalpel.

Like it’s like, it’s like, so, so don’t, don’t talk normal when you’re talking to other experts, that was especially if like lives depend on it. But do talk normal when you’re talking to people who need to understand. That’s also the linked context, right? The context matters a lot, being super audience aware.

That’s, that’s exactly right. And so often, and as, as you see in the, in the book and actually in my life, one of the things I talk about is script spotting, how often there are scripts implicit or explicit in the space or in, in, in a format and the things that we do. And you have to see them and make sure that those are the scripts you want to be holding your

conversation by, or is there some other script? And then how do you undo that if you need to do it? Tom, can I tell you a really little funny story? So I would do a lot of lectures. I still, I mean, I still am doing them, but they’re just all online right now.

But, and they’re in these giant auditoriums with like, you know, 500, sometimes 2000 people and then, and I’m on stage, they would give me a podium, like it’s like I had whatever. And I was like, I just did not like that script. That wasn’t a script that I wanted to follow. And so basically I am, I would have them remove the podium, put a bench or like a stool,

give me a lavalier, about a third of the way through the me being on stage, I would take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves about another third of the way I would actually take off my shoes. And then if it was really good, I would come down to the audience and do the competition in the audience because I wanted to undo this script that was established by an auditorium.

So you, so if you, if you get wise and you start to make a plan and kind of kind of think about what’s the plan for your conversation, you can actually spot the scripts and undo the scripts that you don’t want to kind of live with. I want to come at this from a different angle. I guess I’ve had a couple of teammates help me understand the subject of, of code switching.

Both teammates and a few podcasts over the last two years. What’s your take on code switching? Should we be teaching code switching? Is that always a good thing? That’s a, that’s a complex one. It’s really funny. I’m having this really funny thing because like

everyone that I’ve met in New Orleans right now is black and I’m trying to find somebody to cut my hair and they keeping like, yeah, I don’t know anyone who knows how to cut like a white boy’s hair. So it’s like, so don’t, don’t ask me, but I, you know, I have to say, like, I actually, I don’t love the term code switching. And here’s, here’s my perspective is like, I really believe that we should be, we should be speaking from authenticity.

Like, I feel like it’s really important that you kind of are authentically who you are. Like, I’m a white man. Like, like it’s like, I paid my way through college and undergrad, or graduate and undergraduate, but at the same time, like I went to a private school that I really couldn’t afford because my father was the headmaster of it. And, and so I come from privilege, you know, it’s like, it’s there’s, there’s not that much I can do about it. But at the

same time, like, you know, I, like, I find myself as I’m doing lectures, like, people want dating advice. And I’m like, okay, if that’s what you want, let’s go dating, you know, it’s like, and people want advice on race and gender and diversity. And I’m like, okay, you know, what we’ll do that within reason in terms until I feel like I can’t really answer the questions that we need to be, we need to be answering. So I don’t, I don’t love code switching to me sounds a little like

play acting, like you’re like, okay, well, today I’m going to really play up the gay card, because that’s what I’ve got, you know, it’s like, and today I’m really going to play up the like, I’m old, I’m like 53, you know, card. And so it’s like, whatever. But I really feel like what’s really more important is that you, you embrace all of the use that are there and bring them in. Like, I’m going to tell you one really quick and somewhat somewhat intimate story. It’s the story

of how I came out. And so there’s the how I came out when I was 15. And there’s how I actually finally came out, which is that one day I woke up and I was like, I’m going to pretend I’m a gay man and just walk around all day and have conversations as though as a gay out gay man. And I ended that day and I was like, that was the best day ever. And I was like, that’s it. I’m coming out. And so what I would say is, you know, by living in who I am, I’ve often been able

to kind of get into conversations that I wouldn’t get into otherwise. Like my move, my conversations with the movement for black lives started with a woman who was ahead of comm saying, I’m going to ask you a bunch of questions are really interesting design and design thinking and how it applies to the movement for black lives. But because you’re a white man, there’s a good likelihood that I won’t listen to anything that you say. And I was like, well, that’s not okay for me. It’s like,

it’s like, and I’m like, and she’s like, well, you will never understand the systemic genocide of black men in America. This was years back. And I was like, I’m a gay man who grew up in the 80s. And we talked about AIDS as genocide. And she was like, you did it. And I was like, yeah. And so like, it took us a year of conversation to get to the place where we could kind of find that kind of center of agreement. But but it was worthwhile conversation to have. And it was just by being

like, no, let me give you a little bit of background. Like, it’s like, you don’t remember that you mean you were put you were born after the 80s. Like, it’s like, let’s just like kind of like, have this conversation. So I feel like rather, in fact, what I would, what I’d like us to be teaching our kids is authentically showing up as themselves, and all of the cells that they are. So that that implies environments of safety and belonging with a level of attachment, right,

where you can present an authentic self. So that’s right. But it does come back to context that we talked about a few minutes ago of being context aware enough of a space to understand if they’re ready for all the use that you’re bringing to the party. Yeah, no, it really does. And you know, the the the high school that I went to had these really interesting kinds of things. So for instance, like, we would have and every like every three

days a week, we had a all school, what we call the morning exercise. And so the whole school would be together. So it’d be junior kindergarten all the way through senior year, senior would always adopt classes. So you were actually going to be engaging with those classes in really deep ways and understanding each other. I had a lot of mentors from a very young age who were, I think, gay men, boys, white white white boys who were actually, I think in many ways kind of helping

me along as we’re going there. It’s like, but it’s like, I really feel like like in a good way, that not not in a weird way. And I feel like there’s there’s a lot of kind of support in that. And that community was really built to model an expansive and embracing construct, despite the fact that a lot of privilege existed in that construct, because it was a private school. And yet we really we did everything they did everything they could to kind of expand it as

much as possible to the community around it as well. Fred, what do constraints have to do with conversation? Everything. So here’s the thing. In the design vocabulary, we consider constraints to be fantastic, right? So it’s like constraints actually help us expand. They’re often I’ll tell you even career conversations. Every time you close a door, 10 of the doors may open. And so it’s like it’s better to close the door that you can kind of close. Interestingly, Tom, I just

stepped off the board of a university recently, because I was like, I don’t have time. And also, I feel like there’s other places I could be spending the time in kind of more useful ways. But constraints are really another way of saying rules and kind of beginning to establish the rules for a conversation, either collectively, or to set them in a way that feels good, or reset them if they doesn’t feel good, right? So that you can actually think about it. And actually, one of my

favorite stories is around my camera, what it’s called, it’s the responsive classroom, which I think is actually it’s like, it’s like a K through 12 thing, where schools or classes or grades will set the rules for a set of goals for the year. And then collectively, they’ll decide on the rules that actually will help them get to that goal. And so, and there’s rules for rules that they have with them there. But one of them, for instance, is is you have to use all positive language. So you

can’t say no running with scissors or no running with an ass or no running with an attache. You have to say, be safe. Which is like, that’s kind of all encompassing. It’s like running scissors all over it. And I love that. And then one of my favorite ones, camera, it’s something like joy, or be joyful or something. That was just like one of the rules. And I was like, this is like, this is like kind of genius. So I think I actually borrowed a lot on how to think about rules from

classrooms and how classrooms actually do that. So you’re going to make things really responsive. And, you know, Paul, I can tell you one more story. I was I have a lot of friends right now who have 16, 17 year old, 18 year old white boys, sons who are come from privilege, who are getting bullied by their teachers in classrooms right now, or getting bullied by their their their their class classmates. And I’m not willing for us to lose anyone in this generation. Like it’s like, it’s

like, I think I think we all all of them deserve a shot. And so I think we need to be really working to establish the rule that make people safe in those classrooms. Wanted to pop in and share a tool we’ve been hearing teachers rave about and have used and loved ourselves called Screencastify. This screen recording and video editing tool is designed to be easy to use for educators at any skill level and for students of any age. Whether you’re brand

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screencastify.com slash getting smart or click the link in the show notes or this episode’s blog. I would I’d love to dive into that and talk about how education can teach conversation, can teach real dialogue. And you since you started with 16, 17 year olds, let’s talk about high school. How both in terms of culture and curriculum, can we do a better job of of teaching conversation? Well, I think we can do it through our classics. So we can do it through

history. You know, the book is so funny when the book came out, I mean, like Wall Street Journal, like that’s so futuristic. I’m like, no, this is ancient, ancient history. Like we can go way, way, way, way, way, way back in this one. This is this is preliterate cultures. This is preverbal cultures. Like now I think in the end with all is they think that they actually could speak in here, which I think is a really fascinating thing. So and one of my first lectures, I gave

my eighth grade history teacher showed up and she was like, what, you know history? Because I think I got consistent C’s in history. But what I think is really lovely about classroom constructs, and I think that actually works all the way up until kind of like the the the tertiary like, you know, other other kinds of educational context is that we get to have conversations about key societal issues without necessarily always having to have them right on the news. Right. So

reading the Decameran and be talking about plague and and be talking about, you know, like aristocracy and and and the and the and divergence in who gets to kind of tell what kinds of stories like you can do that around the Decameran in a way that feels quite quite safe and comfortable and you can make connections to modern life, but you don’t have to live in the news hook. And I think one of the things I worry about the most for our generations that

are upcoming is riding these news hooks is so painful for them. You know, it’s like it’s like it’s like whereas like if we can if we can talk about now but do it by looking at back, you know, go back to the Bible, right? Like it’s like I you know, my in my school in sixth grade, we had Bible or seventh grade, I think we had Bible myth and epic and where we studied myth, the Bible, and it’s like my husband, I’m always like, really, do I have to teach you the Bible so you can

understand what that just meant? It’s like because it’s like you miss a lot if you miss the kind of key liturgical texts of the fundamental religions that exist in in in the world. You miss a lot if you do you miss the history of indigenous Americas or indigenous populations in general and the way that indigenous people govern. So I would just say that that really learning is such just by learning and talking about these things we can we can we unpack all the ways we can think about

learning about who we are and understand all the ways that we can talk about having conversations. I mean, the interesting time to be like, okay, today to establish a civil conversation, we’re going to use platonic ideals or today we’re going to use ideals that would be set from Christ’s teachings or we’re going to use ideals that were set by you know, we could actually kind of almost play with the rules for every conversation based on the texts that we’re engaging with or

based on it. We can talk about math in really fascinating ways. So I think there’s all kinds of things that we can be doing. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about writing and the development of writing and in writing formative feedback is is quite important. Is that true for conversation and if so, where and how should learners be getting formal or informal feedback on on the way they engage in dialogue? So yeah, what I what I actually talk about quite a yes. However, I think that it’s

like and by the way, it’s let’s let’s be really clear. It’s these are not every conversation. So gossips whispering like telling like funny stories like whatever like that just don’t touch us let those happen like as long as like those feel safe and secure. But these are the hard ones, the ones that might make us afraid, the ones that have to get somewhere really fast. And those are the things we really want to be looking at. And and and by the way, and many of those are

happening classrooms, you know, it’s like because it’s like what happens if you’re reading James Baldwin in a classroom and and what and how do you and what are the safe ways to have those conversations, right? It’s like, what if what if you’re reading a text with ancient swear words that actually still have relevance today, which as we know, many of our texts do. So you have to be thinking about these things kind of all the way through. My perspective is that, yes, you should

be giving kind of feedback as as you move along, but doing it in ways that feel constructive and positive and or one of the things that I write about in the book that I use a lot is a is a construct called peaceful interruption. How can we interrupt something quite peacefully? So we can do it with silence like just giving 30 seconds of silence, right? We do it taking a breath. Is a peaceful interruption? We can do it by singing. So one of the most spectacular moments I’ve ever

seen was a woman who asked if she could say something in a meeting that was going really terribly and she stood up and then she just sang a lullaby. And it kind of made the whole room be like, oh, yeah, we could die because lullabies are really about mortality. And and and that was a really remarkable moment. And so yeah, but I think the thing is that what I think, Tom, and I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on this, it’s like, it’s like, I don’t have to all be like teacherly

moments. Like they don’t have to be like, oh, whatever, instead, it can be things like acknowledging moments like, like, oh, wait, did you notice that something changed in the conversation there? Like suddenly, like, you could feel that everybody got a little bit more elevated or everybody got a little bit more like angry or whatever. Like, let’s notice that change. And let’s understand it, you know. So does that feel does that feel I do think there’s a place for structured feedback

in both oral and written communication, particularly in English, social studies. But there may be the most important place to learn the art of dialogue at the secondary level is probably in the advisory structure where you have a sustained adult relationship, probably a sustained relationship with a dozen 1518 young people where you learn to listen, you learn to talk to each other. I think of the Valor academies where they start each day in a circle, and they practice

speaking with each other. And I think it’s those teachable moments in a safe, supported environment, in a context of sustained relationships, where you can really learn the art of conversation. Well, it’s a great example of it. I don’t know, I don’t know the organization, I’ll look it up right after I get off. But I think, but you hit you said a word that I think is really important here, which is practice, right, which is that it’s like, you may not think about it, but we have to

practice conversations. We have to we have to practice like I have a friend who wrote a book called giving voice to values, Mary Gentilly, and she looked at people who were whistleblowers in their institution. And she found two things. One was, these are people who learned how to kind of get used to their own voice, going back to that code switching question, like that they could actually kind of say something in a way that they felt comfortable with, because they were like,

most people don’t identify as courageous. And so, right, she’s quite shy. So she was saying, rather than sort of saying, Hey, stop telling that racist joke, she would just say, Hey, there’s work to be done. Can we move on to the work? And that would be like kind of a way to hear. But the second thing that she learned was the people who split up to malfeasance in one way or another in the workplace often had had somebody in her life who made them practice having that conversation.

What about little kids? Any any thoughts about the primary grades and things that we could do to teach dialogue? Little kids are little kids are pretty good at it. And so what’s what’s funny is that it’s like when I would design education spaces, which I did quite a bit or education, it’s like, I would often look at kindergarten and to understand it. So creative tensions, which is one of the structures I built, which is basically about people moving

to themselves back and forth across a room based on how they feel about where they stand in terms of ideas that seem like they’re in polemic with each other, like, I’m more silk, I’m more corduroy, or when police are around, I feel safe, or I feel more unsafe. And kids are really good at that. And that’s why I always tell adults when I do that, that when I do that kind of structure is I’m like, Hey, listen, it’s like five year olds can do this really well. So you

probably got this. But it’s actually harder for like adults to do it than often than kindergarteners. I do think I think a lot I don’t have children, which for me is hard, like I’ve always wanted children. But I love talking to children. And I love talking. And I think it’s really important to talk to them about the things that they care about, like, what do they want to be when they grow up? And like, in my village, I have a house in Maine, and it’s on an unbridged island. And

when I come into town, like the kids just like swarm around us like to talk to us. And I’m always like, I’m like, you want to be a private detective? I’ve got a mystery. Can you can you solve this? Here’s a nickel. Like, it’s like, it’s like, oh, it’s like, you know, you want to be a, you know, it’s like whatever. So it’s just like, it’s kind of like encouraging that imagination, life of imagination, and the fact that they’re in conversation. I mean, what’s interesting,

Tom, is that the kids, the kids that are emerging today, if we let them be who they’re going to be, they’re going to be spectacular, mythical things that we would never have seen before. I do. I guess I’m circumspect about the strange year that we just went through, and the generation of young people that haven’t had in person conversations. For some, the safety of Zoom and the space for them to interact has actually been a benefit. But I think

for most young people, the absence of conversation, both formal and informal in person, has been a real detriment. So I hope starting this summer, this fall, we can reconnect with kids and create safe places for them to have a dialogue. Yeah. I mean, and it is really funny. I will say there are places, I mean, by the way, the swarms of kids are similar. That was our island in the fall because we had had no cases. And so it was like, and really, I haven’t had any cases there yet,

of any kind of significant context or construct. But it’s one of the reasons why I’m liking, one of the things I’m seeing, Tom, is kind of like this new rural urban blur. So the small town that we live in upstate, they were about to close the high school because they only had, like, I think, eight graduates. And now there’s about like 50 students in the graduating class. And that’s because people have come from Brooklyn, and this is three and a half hours northwest of

New York into the small town. So not only are they saving the school, but we’re blurring these people who had never gotten blurred before. And like, they’re understanding, like, so what I’m hoping is that that’s going to break down this notion of the, of the, what’s rural, what’s urban, or what’s flyover and what’s not. I think that’ll be good enough, not just for us, but for the globe. And I will say one other thing, I did do an interview for Child Art Magazine really early on,

and they were like, what’s one conversation every kid should be having right now. And I was like, you should be talking to your dog, your cat, your fish, your tree, your plant, because talking with the earth is one of the most important things that we do right now. So I don’t know. Fred earlier, I mentioned Valar Cleigie to academies. The name of their program is called Compass. And there are now, there’s now hundreds of schools around the country using their Compass

program. Beautiful, beautiful example of culture plus skills that lead to thoughtful dialogue. Yeah, no, I know, actually, I do know Compass. And it’s interesting because the next place I’m going is Nashville. So thanks for the tip. Yeah, check it out. Tough conversations. How do you, if you’re thinking about a tough conversation with your partner, or maybe a work partner, any tips for how to enter into that conversation?

Yeah. So, first of all, there’s a couple of different ways. Like, so one of the toughest conversations that I always had to get into was the idea of critique, because my job was to critique teams, clients, all kinds of things all the time. And in that situation where I’m giving the cheek, I have the power. And so one of the things that I often do when I’m speaking to my teams for this day or anyone to this day is say, I got the power, I’m going to pass it to you. What are some things

you don’t want to touch? I won’t touch them. What are things you really need help on? And we’ll work on those things together. And then you’re going to pass the power back to me. And then we’ll have that conversation. And yeah, and it’s a very simple mechanism. It works really well in, it almost always works. It’s like, and you also, you don’t do, don’t have tough conversations when you haven’t eaten, like, you know, don’t, don’t have tough conversations when you’re really,

really tired, don’t have conversations. That’s another, that’s a great tip. It’s like, it’s like basic physiology. No, my team knows that a good hangry. It’s like, no, we shouldn’t have that conversation right now. That’s exactly right. Another mechanism I use that I use both of my teams, but I also use with my husband is I in the, in the book, I write about a thing called hunch hour where you, um, you throw it a hunch, like Satomi would throw out a hunch, like, I might

even ask you if you have a hunch. And then I would either complicate or confirm that hunch, but I can’t do that. Which by the way, is not saying I disagree or I agree. And by the way, you’re not throwing out a thesis, you’re throwing out a hunch. And, and, and I would basically say I could only complicate or confirm if for instance, um, I had a piece of evidence around it. So for instance, my husband and I will have this conversation where I’m like, Hey, it seems like

it’s a really good year for us to adopt a child. And he’s like, I’m going to complicate that by saying, I don’t want to raise a child as a single, as a single father. And I’ll be like, I’ll complicate that by saying it. So I have to ask you this, is, has this book made your life more complicated? Like everyone you interact with now thinks, Oh, Fred, he’s that expert on, on conversation. I never say expert, right? Because the moment you say expert, you’re going to, you’re going to go

down. It just happens to be well practiced, um, in, in, in the art of it. And, and, you know, my husband will say it’s like, I don’t, I don’t, everybody’s so it’s, no, it’s made my life more fun. I mean, it’s, it’s been sure it’s been fun, but I’m sure there’s people that sort of beat you over the head with your own book, uh, on occasion. It’s all kinds of, I’ve had that. I’ve had like, it’s like, I’ve had corrections. I have like, every once in a while, I’ll, I like to turn

people on Twitter. So the vegans were really mad at me a while back ago. And I was like, Hey vegans, I love you. Like you’re probably convinced me that I should be a vegan. And they were like, we love you too. And it’s, it’s just like, yeah. So Fred, um, it’s a complicated world. Um, you, you, you’re, your resume is evidence that you are a voracious learner. What, what’s the Fred dust, learning function? How do you keep developing as a human? Give us a couple tips.

Well, if you haven’t, if you can’t tell, um, I have, I have an abundance mindset, um, which people are always like, like, literally, people come over and they’re like, what’s up? Like, it’s like, it’s like, like, like I will always, one of my, my, my sayings is just an, an Angelinoism. It’s from Los Angeles is like, it’s like, it isn’t home, but it’s much. Um, which is like, kind of, let’s say, which is that, you know, my, my perspective, there’s two things that I, well, I’ll tell you what my

mission is. And it’s like, but my perspective is my, my mother had a stroke when she was 24. I recognized them that I had a time limit on my life. Um, and so I would took it upon myself to say, I’m going to make conversation with everyone I can ever meet because I want to know everyone I want to, I want to know as much as I possibly can. That’s the mission I have right now is to be out there consistently telling stories of people who’ve gotten through the hardest conversations of their

lives creatively and through making and through thinking carefully about the conversations. That is not the story that politicians want to tell. That is not the story that the newspapers want to tell, but it’s our job to make sure that people tell that story. That’s beautiful. Beautiful mission and unusual one, but I love it. That’s, that’s pretty what we try to do this podcast as well. Fred Dust, it’s a great book. Um, we think it’s a great book, particularly for

teachers, for educators. It’s a book parents ought to read. I think high school kids would get a tremendous amount. Um, this ought to be required reading in junior English. What do you think of that, Fred? I think it’s, I think it’s PG 13. So I think, I think we all that right now, I don’t even know what that is anymore. Cause it’s like, so, so yeah, I think that’s right. Um, it’s a, and and I will tell you, I, one thing that we haven’t, it was like, you know, I was the son of a headmaster.

Um, and, and, and boy, the stories I could tell. So something that we’ll have to come up and I can, I can tell you just about the, that it’s like to be a son of a headmaster. So Fred, thanks for your book and thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Tom. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much to Fred for joining us on this week’s episode. We are inspired by his continued leadership in making processes, products and minds better. For more on design thinking,

be sure to check out episode 301 with Joe or Peldine on magical schools and Thrively. We’ll be sure to put the link in the show notes and on the blog. All right. That’s it for today, listeners for the Getting Smart podcast. This is Jessica signing off.