Find Your Why: a practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team pdfdrive com

Run the Why Discovery
Process
(
2–2.5 HOURS)
Sharing personal stories and identifying their themes are critical pieces
of the Why Discovery process for individuals and groups alike. In the Tribe Approach, we achieve
this through what we call the Three Conversations.
The Three Conversations
An early Apple slogan once proclaimed, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” These
conversations are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. The tough part is that participants
are forced to find language to express how they feel. For a few people, this will be easy enough,
but most participants find that having these conversations takes considerable energy.
There will likely be times during this process when everything seems messy, when you don’t seem
to be getting the responses you need or to be moving closer to WHY. Trust the process.
Remember, this exercise is more about the feeling that is generated in the room than the exact
words that come out of the conversation.

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The first step in the exercise is to divide the group into three teams of roughly the same size. The
easiest way to do this is to split the room between left, right and rear (see diagram above). Ideally
each team will be composed of individuals of varying roles, positions, genders and length of time
at the organization. If you don’t think the left–right–rear approach will yield enough diversity within
teams, you can be more intentional in your assignments. This is not the NFL draft. We’re not
suggesting you line everyone up and study their CVs before you assign them to a team. Just use
your basic awareness of the demographics in the room and you’ll do fine. The more diverse the
experiences represented on each team, the more dynamic and engaged the conversations. And,
as discussed earlier, we want people to think differently in this group than they usually do—
working with new and unfamiliar people tends to make that happen.
Once the teams are established, each group should gather around a flip chart and easel.
Encourage teams to get up and stand around their respective flip charts, rather than move their
chairs closer. Standing releases energy and makes the process more interactive.
You will now present the teams with a starting point for each of the three conversations. We
recommend that you project each prompt onto a screen as you introduce it; that way you can be
sure that everyone in the room can easily see it and refer back to it as necessary. For each
prompt, you will give some direction on how to engage in the conversation and then allow time for
team members to discuss among themselves.
FACILITATOR TIP
It’s best if you don’t share any of the prompts with the group in advance. You want participants to
share the first thoughts that come to mind. If you give them the prompts beforehand, they’ll

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probably overthink things, which could negatively impact the process.