Our Triples (Vol. 1)
Key Threes to Solve Your Big and Common Challenges
Our work is easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to remember. Why?
Because we use triples.
A triple is “key three” set of core elements that explain how to best address a challenge.
Decades after learning a triple, many our clients still say thank you for the triples we shared with them. Your brain can remember a triple for a long time!
There’s more to learning something than a triple (like science, experiential learning, and all those other methods we use at OYF), but a good triple is a great foundation.
Here is a page of our favorite original triples that we created for our work and trainings with links to deeper dives.
How do you build highly collaborative teams?
Acknowledge
Connect
Explore
This triple makes up the ACE Team Model, a model built on what science shows teams need to do the most to perform and collaborate at their highest level.
To use the model, team members:
Acknowledge by seeing the needs of, celebrating the accomplishments of, and showing gratitude for each other.
Connect through commonalities they share, stories they hear about each, and shared experiences they have together.
Explore together by wondering about ways to work better together (e.g., “what ifs”), anticipating future experiences, and learning new ideas together.
In order to ACE you need to take time to do each of the three components through regular small habits and longer full ACE sessions. We have developed the tools, habits, and experience models to enable you to ACE.
How do you navigate uncertainty in the modern working world?
Let Go
Notice More
Use Everything
This triple comes from the Improv Mindset, a mindset for navigating uncertainty, inspired by how improv performers act on stage and refined with behavioral science. It helps people collaborate, communicate, create, and navigate uncertainty together.
To use the mindset:
Let Go of what can't be changed, of some expectations, of certain old ways, and a need to know everything now
Notice More about your environment, your situation, your colleagues, your customers, and of course, yourself
Use Everything or use at lot by recognizing the “offers” and then using them (“yes, anding”) to move forward into uncertainty.
How do you deliver an engaging a presentation?
Balance your attention on:
You, The Presenter
Them, The Audience
It, The Content
This triple forms the Engagement Triangle. Most presenters focus on themselves or their content, and they often forget about the audience. This model helps you do the opposite.
To use the triangle, you balance focusing on the
You, the presenter - including your knowledge, authority, storytelling, status, and presence
Them, the audience - their dreams, needs, realities, questions, and concerns
It, the content - the data, slides, argument, facts, and the reveals
How do you give effective feedback?
Motivate
Inform
Connect
This triple forms the MIC Model for giving effective feedback. The model, built from social-motivational-cognitive psychology, is important, because often we give feedback that only does one of three such as a high-energy boss that emotionally motivates but does not inform with useful direction and does not connect in a supportive human way.
To give effective feedback in every day situations or special situations like annual reviews, you should strive to:
Motivate - provide emotion, efficacy, inspiration, incentive
Inform - give data, direction, information, guidance, possibilities
Connect - foster friendship, positivity, support, relationships, trust
Giving feedback that delivers the complete triple can be quite difficult and nuanced. We have thus developed and adapted a number of tools for feedback conversations that allows you to give the type of feedback that does all three.
How do you creatively solve problems?
Frame the Problem
Break Your Routines
Communicate the Value
This triple forms our model for Creative Problem Solving Model. It is a widely effective, straightforward model that can be useful in most problem-solving situations, from the biggest to the everyday — unlike most problem-solving models, which tend to be more focused on niche scenarios.
To creatively solve problems:
First Frame the Problem, so you make sure you are solving the “right” problem, rather than just rushing in.
Then Break Your Routines, because if you need new solutions, you need new behaviors, so do something different.
Finally, Communicate the Value because a good solution only gets to be an implemented action, when you can communicate its value to others. To do this, we suggest you use another triple, Goal -> Insight -> Action, as your communication template.
Together, this flexible model is the one everyone should be using, or at least have in their back pocket as a complement to what they are already doing to solve problems.
How do you fully acknowledge others?
See
Celebrate
Thank
This triple forms our model for Acknowledge (The A in our larger ACE Model). It is built on the idea that acknowledgement actually has multiple forms, and it is important to do all of them and further it can actually be problematic to only do one or two — e.g., celebrating a team member’s success without seeing their challenges and needs.
To full acknowledge make sure to take time to:
See others’ difficulties, struggles, needs, presence, and reality.
Celebrate others’ work, accomplishments, and abilities.
Thank others’ for what they have done for you or others in a way that expresses gratitude, not just praise.
In our ACE work we share the science of the nuances between these different forms of acknowledgement and give you tools to help you express all of them.
End of Volume 1. Volume 2 coming soon.
