Two hours with what you carry

The one rule

Nobody shows their whole bag. Each person picks one thing out of 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 nobody gets aligned. Three people can carry the same word in three different places and all three be right, because the question is what it costs them to hold it. The team’s bag is the team’s, and it never overrides anyone’s own.

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.

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 in your backpack, 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

• Their own bag, on their phoneWhatever they found in their five minutes.It is the thing they look at in a trio, and nobody else needs to see the screen.
• A laptop and the big screen, if the room is a teamThe team’s bag, which belongs to everyone in the room.Opened with “Do this together” for the group’s bag at 1:25. Everyone answers on their own phone.

Never collect anyone’s bag

A person’s bag is theirs. This only goes wrong one way: a facilitator asking everyone to send theirs in, or to put it on the big screen.

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 thing exists to avoid. The team’s bag is the one bag that goes on the big screen, because it belongs to everyone in the room.

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.

Three questions, asked open

Each has a short version, in small type. In the room the open one works much better.

• If it were gone tomorrow, would you still be you?Who would you be if it were gone? Describe that person to me.Is that a worse person, or just a different one?
• Could a good argument change your mind about it?When did someone last tell you that you had this wrong?What did you do in the next ten seconds? What happened in your body before you said anything?
• Did you choose it, or did you pick it up somewhere?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 carrying it last cost you something?
• What do you get out of holding it?Something carried out of habit 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.

Deciding where it belongs

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

1. Say it in the sentence of each place in turn. I am for the backpack, I believe for the hands, I value for the path. The whole sentence each time. Let them hear which one sounds true; it is often not the one they started with.
2. Then finish this 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 bags.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 beforehandGive them five minutes at the start on their phones. 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 backpack is emptyBeing flexible about everything is its own way of protecting yourself. A backpack 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. Where something goes is about what it costs you to hold it, never about what the word means. Two people can carry the same word in different places and both be right.
• The team cannot agree where something goes in its bagThat disagreement is the finding. Put it in the hands for now, write down both views, and come back to it. Never vote.
• You are running lateCut the group’s bag to eight minutes. Never cut the third trio round, and never cut the thing to try. A session that ends without a date and a name is a nice conversation that changes nothing.

What everyone leaves with

• Their bag, with one thing in it they now know belongs where it is, or have moved to where it does.
• That thing's sentence, in their own handwriting. I am, I believe or 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 thing to try, 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.
• If the room was a team, the team's own bag, and where it matches theirs. 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.

The team’s bag, or the wall of what kept turning up, is a useful description of what your group protects. The patterns, never anybody’s name. 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.

• In my backpackThis is me. I would carry it anywhere.Who I am. Not for changing.
• In my handsIt guides what I do. Putting it down would sting.What guides me. Can change, and it would sting.
• On the pathIt matters, and I could walk on without it.What matters to me. Changes with ease.

Aim for a backpack that holds what is really you, on purpose, however many things that is.

Three phrases worth knowing

• The backpack. The few things that are really you. Knowing which they are is what lets everything else stay open to change.
• The volume knob. Your defaults have volumes. At three it is a preference you can talk about; at nine it is running you.
• The ladder. I am, then I believe, then I value, and here is what would change my mind. Moving something is that change of sentence, and nothing more.