Two hours with your rings

The one rule

Nobody shows their whole target. Each person picks one thing off it and talks about that. Say this early and say it twice, because half the room walks in braced to be asked to perform their inner life to colleagues.

The second half of the rule: listeners ask questions and say back what they heard. They do not give advice. Advice turns this into people coaching each other badly, and it turns the speaker into somebody defending a position instead of looking at one.

What this is not

It is not a values workshop, and nothing gets aligned. Three people can put the same word in three different rings and all three be right, because the question is what it costs them to hold it.

Six to fifteen people. Under six and you cannot make trios; over fifteen and the whole-room round turns into a queue. It works with a team, with a leadership group, or with a cohort who barely know each other. The stranger version is often easier: less history in the room, less to protect.

Before the day

Send the invitation about a week out, and a one-line nudge the day before. People who arrive without having done it are not a disaster, but they are spectators for the first forty-five minutes, and they know it.

Half an hour is honest. There are sixty-eight cards to sort, and people can skip any that mean nothing to them and type their own words instead. Tell them the last two steps are the ones that matter: being pressed on what landed near the middle, and then rewriting one sentence.

The message to send

What you do first

Do the whole thing yourself, properly, before you send anything. You will need an answer when somebody asks what is at your centre, which they will, in the first fifteen minutes.

Go first in the room, with something real. The room’s honesty settles at whatever level you set in the first five minutes, and it does not rise later.

What people bring

The last screen offers three ways to take the work with you, and they carry different amounts. Ask for the image, and tell anyone who wants the full record to print it.

• Download as an imageA picture of the target: every item as a labelled chip in its ring, with a count per ring. Not the verdicts, the rewritten sentences or the experiments.What everyone brings. It is the thing you put on the table in a trio.
• PrintWhatever screen you are on. On the last screen that is the reading, each thing moved outward with its new sentence, what would change their mind, the experiment, and what they kept at the centre with its verdict.The complete record. Print to PDF and keep it for the three-month look.
• Copy a link to this targetEverything. Every label, which ring it sits in, where it started, all three answers per item, the falsifier and the rewritten sentence.Sending it to one person they chose. Nothing else.

Never collect the links

The link carries the whole interior, in the part of the address that is never sent to a server, so whoever holds it is the only person who has it. That is a good design, and it makes the link dangerous in exactly one situation: a facilitator asking everyone to send theirs in.

Do not ask. Say at the start that you are not asking, and that nothing from the session is collected or written down. A group that suspects the exercise is a covert assessment will give you the person they would rather be, which is the failure the whole model exists to avoid.

On paper, if you can

Printed pictures on a table beat phones. People point at a printed target. They hold a phone at an angle nobody else can see, and the conversation stays two feet away from the thing it is about.

Two practical traps worth repeating in the invitation: the tool keeps everything in the browser it was used in, so anyone who does it on a laptop and arrives with a phone has nothing to bring unless they downloaded the image. And a private window, or clearing site data, wipes it with nothing to recover from.

The two hours

120 minutes, and the shape matters more than the content. Write the three switch times on the board before anyone arrives: trios that lose track cost the third speaker their turn, which is the most common way this session goes wrong.

The questions

One line covers most of it, and it is worth putting on the board: when they give you a position, ask for an occasion. A question that can be answered with a view gets a view, and a view is a thing people defend. A question that asks for a particular Tuesday gets a story, and nobody defends a story.

Print this part, one copy per trio, and put it face down on the table.

The three the tool asks, opened up

The tool asks these with three answers to choose from, because it has to score them. In the room they are much better open.

• Someone you respect says, in front of other people, that you have this wrong.When did that last actually happen?What did you do in the next ten seconds? What happened in your body before you said anything?
• It is gone tomorrow. You lose it, or it turns out not to be true.Who would you be if you stopped? Describe that person to me.Is that a worse person, or just a different one?
• Where did this come from?Whose voice is it in?Did you ever actually decide it, or did you just never stop?

Openers that get past a position

Use two or three of these, not all of them. Space between questions does more work than another question.

• When did it last cost you something?
• What do you get out of holding it?Armour is always earning somebody something. This finds out what.
• If I gave you a week without it, what are you afraid would happen?
• What is the smallest version of this that you would still defend?Finds the real edge, which is usually much further in than the stated one.
• Who have you been unfair to because of it?Heavy. Once per session, and only in a trio that is clearly going well.

Moving it out a ring

This is the last four minutes of a trio, and it is mechanical on purpose.

1. Say it again, but start with I believe instead of I am. The whole sentence. Let them hear it; it almost always comes out shorter.
2. Now start with I value, and finish the sentence: and here is what would change my mind.
3. If nothing comes, do not rescue them. Say this instead:

Questions to leave alone

• Why is that so important to you?Invites a speech, and a speech is the most defended thing a person owns.
• Don't you think that's a bit…Advice wearing a question mark.
• Have you tried…Advice not even bothering.
• Anything comparing two people's targets.There is no scoreboard, and the moment somebody thinks there is, the honest answers stop.

What the scribe writes

The speaker’s own words, untidied. Specifically:

• The first thing they said, before they had arranged it.
• Whatever came after a pause. That is usually the true one.
• Any sentence that started with “I suppose” or “I have never said this before”.

Not the asker’s questions, and not a summary. A summary is the scribe’s opinion, and the whole value of the read-back is that it contains none.

When it goes sideways

• A third of them did not do it beforehandDo not send anyone out and do not let anyone sit and watch. Give them the ten quiet minutes and one question instead of a target: name one thing about yourself you would defend hard in a meeting. That is enough to run a full trio on.
• A trio has turned into adviceYou will hear it before you see it: the speaker has gone quiet and one listener is talking. Walk over, say “questions only”, walk away. Do not sit down, do not demonstrate, do not fix it for them.
• Someone gets upsetRare, and almost always around something inherited. Do not make it a moment. Say quietly that they can stop there and that it is a complete answer, and let the trio carry on. Find them once at the break, one to one, and not again.
• Somebody's target is empty in the middleBeing flexible about everything is its own kind of armour. A pack with nothing in it leaves you nothing to stand on. Ask them what they would not trade, and when they last refused something that cost them.
• Somebody is performingUsually the most senior person present. The counter is you, at five past the hour, going first with something uncomfortable. If it persists, do not fight it in the room. Just make sure they are not in a trio with anyone who reports to them.
• Reporting lines inside a trioForm the trios yourself. Never let the room self-select, and never let somebody sit with the person who writes their review. Say why out loud; it makes the rest of the room relax too.
• The room wants to argue about definitionsAnswer it once and move on. The ring is about what it costs you to hold the word, never about what the word means. Two people can put the same word in different rings and both be right.
• You are running lateCut the whole-room round to eight minutes. Never cut the third trio round, and never cut the experiment. A session that ends without a date and a name is a nice conversation that changes nothing.

What everyone leaves with

• Their picture, with one thing on it that now has a different sentence attached to it.
• That sentence, in their own handwriting. I am became I believe, or I believe became I value.
• One thing that would change their mind, or the clear knowledge that nothing would, which is an answer too and a more useful one than most people expect.
• One experiment, with a date inside two weeks and a person's name in it.
• A witness who has agreed to ask, once, whether they did it.
• One pattern the whole room turned out to share. This is the part nobody can get on their own.

And what they do not leave with, which matters just as much: no score, no verdict, no plan, and no document anywhere with their name beside their beliefs.

Afterwards

Send one short message the next morning, and make sure it contains nothing anybody said. If you send a recap with people’s words in it, you have broken the promise you made at the start, and the next session you run with those people will be politer and much less useful.

If the room agreed to it, photograph the wall of what kept turning up at the centre. The patterns, never anybody’s name. That list is a useful description of what your group protects, and it is worth putting back in front of them the next time somebody asks why a particular change keeps not happening.

The words, in plain language

One page you can print and put on each table, so nobody has to remember what a word meant.

• IdentityHard to change, and it should be. Argue with something in here and you are arguing with the person. A few strong things belong here. Not many.
• Core beliefsWhat guides your everyday decisions. You see yourself in these, so changing one stings. Keep too many and you slow your own learning down.
• Meaningful to youThings you care about without being them. Something new changes your view and it costs you nothing. Most of what you believe belongs out here.

Adaptability increases outward. Aim for a small, deliberate middle rather than an empty one.

The four readings the tool gives

They come from two questions it asks about everything near the centre: how hard you defend it, and whether you would still be you without it. People routinely confuse those two, and the gap between them is exactly what can be moved.

• A quiet centreReally you, and you are not brittle about it.This is what the middle is for. You could hear the argument against it and it would still be true of you. Leave it where it is.
• Yours, and tenderYours, and you guard it hard.Some things are worth guarding. The cost is a few conversations you cannot hear properly, so learn which ones and say so when you walk into one.
• ArmourYou would survive losing this. You fight like you would not.Nothing about who you are depends on this, so every argument about it costs you and buys you nothing. The best thing here to hold more loosely.
• Already looseCosts you nothing to hold, and nothing to let go.It sits near your centre out of habit. Move it out and give the space to something that earned it.

Three phrases worth knowing

• The backpack. Core beliefs are things you carry. The more of them you refuse to put down, the heavier you travel, and past a point you cannot move at all.
• The volume knob. Your defaults have volumes. At three it is a preference you can talk about; at nine it is running you. Above about 7, people report acting rather than deciding.
• The ladder. I am, then I believe, then I value, and here is what would change my mind. Moving something out a ring is that change of sentence, and nothing more.