Cheri Torres | thesofiamagazine

Priming the Family for Great Dinner Conversations

by Cheri Torres | Dec 31, 2019 | Asheville, Communication, Conversation, Positive Change

By Cheri Torres

I’ve heard parents lament their efforts at hosting family dinners. They too often end up eating in silence after several attempts at starting a conversation. At the end of a long day, trying to talk over dinner just feels like more work. The result, we return to dining by screen light. Don’t give up! With practice, we can regain the lost art of conversation. In fact, consider adding this to your 2020 New Year’s resolutions. Here’s how you can make it easy.

First, choose a topic that has interest and inspires creative thinking. Be sure everyone can participate even if you have children at the table. Then create a positive frame for it. For example, a national discussion topic around public schooling is the achievement gap. Many of these conversations are focused on “fixing kids” or “fixing teachers.” This is a subject every child in school can weigh in on. They will have ideas and insights that adults won’t have. Here’s how you might frame such a conversation for the family:

When some of the flowers in our garden aren’t blooming, we don’t try to change the flowers, we change their environment: giving them extra nutrients, water, sunlight. Not all children bloom in our school environments. Instead of trying to change them, we can change their environment.

Then, ask questions. Let the youngest be the first to answer, make sure everyone has a chance, and no one dominates the dialogue. Be sure to join in yourself and be the last to answer. Follow up on great ideas with questions to deepen and broaden the thinking; see how they might unfold. Link similar ideas together, building and expanding the realm of possibilities. Ask questions that inspire curiosity and creative thinking; invite everyone to be part of the conversation. For example:

What are your teachers doing to help every student bloom?

When are you most alive and excited about learning?

Tell me about a specific time when you felt like you bloomed in school. What did you value about yourself, other students, and your teacher in that experience?

What do you think would help your peers who are struggling?

How can students help each other bloom? What strengths do you have that would help others?

What three wishes do you have to make schools a place where everyone blooms?

Here are some additional topics and reframes to get you started:

Anyone can come up with answers, but the sign of genius is asking great questions.

What questions did you ask today?

What are you most curious about?

What disruptive questions might change the way we think about _______.

You can also focus crafting questions on a specific topic.

What genius questions might we ask about ______?

Innovative solutions to some of our climate challenges are being discovered or developed daily, like fungi that decompose plastic, 3-D on-site building printing, and the Clean Ocean Interceptor (which cleans plastic from rivers).

What do we do in our daily living that contributes negatively to climate change?

What are some ways we could decrease our negative impact right now?

What technological innovation might allow us to keep doing what

we’re doing and not have a negative impact?

There are no problems in the world we cannot solve!

If you could solve one problem in the world, what would you solve?

What would be the outcome?

How would you know you were successful?

What are we already doing and what else might we do to achieve that?

Find an inspiring short video to kick off a conversation. To find one, google ‘inspirational videos,” “positive news,” “innovation that is changing everything,” or another uplifting topic. Then start off a conversation based upon the video. Some examples might be:

People doing good deeds for others might foster conversations guided
by questions such as:

How does this video inspire you?

How did you help someone or do a good deed for someone else today?

How can we help each other each day?

New inventions that resolve an important human need (clean water, food, housing).
Questions might include:

What do you think made it possible for this invention to come about?

What needs do we have in our community that could use an invention?

What kind of impact do you want to have in our family? Community? The world?

Remember, the art of conversation is not about right and wrong. It is not about one good solution or the best idea. The art of conversation is about fostering connection, shared understanding, and the expansion of ideas and possibilities. In our polarized world, we desperately need to rekindle the art of conversation. Tonight, inspire a family dinner conversation. Make room for everyone’s voice, even young ones. Keep asking generative questions and creating space for conversation to grow. Let’s make 2020 the year that civil and creative conversation finds its way back into our homes and communities. It can all begin around the family dinner!

Cheri Torres is Lead Catalyst for positive change and organization consultant with Collaborative by Design. Visit ConversationsWorthHaving.today to download a free Conversation Toolkit, or visit cheritorres.com.

Holiday Conversations Worth Having

by Cheri Torres | Dec 3, 2019 | Asheville, Collaborative Learning, Conversation

By Cheri Torres

Holiday season brings joyful expectations. It is also often accompanied by stress and anxiety. Paying attention to your interactions and intentionally fostering a positive tone and direction can go a long way toward making sure your holidays stay fun and happy.

Watch that Non-Stop Inner Dialogue

This is a time of year to intentionally watch your conversations. Make sure they’re worth having. Begin with the conversations you’re having with yourself. Is your internal dialogue fueling stress and anxiety? If you’re fretting, worrying, imagining what might go wrong, the answer is yes. Those kinds of inner conversations heavily influence what actually happens. Here’s how: Biologically, these conversations trigger the release of “stress hormones”: Cortisol, norepinephrine, and testosterone are the three major ones. This biochemical soup preps our fight or flight response. The bigger the dose, the bigger the response. This, in turn:

• Increases our heart rate

• Increases our blood pressure

• Suppresses our immune system

• Decreases access to the brain’s prefrontal lobe and neocortex, which means limited access to emotional intelligence, creativity, and higher order thinking. It influences perception, even affecting our ability to hear and see accurately.

When we’re primed in this way, we often over-react, misjudge, misunderstand, respond aggressively, snap, and make bad decisions. Such stress leads to over-eating and drinking, which in turn, inhibits a good night’s sleep, adding to our stress. All our fears
and anxieties become self-fulfilling prophecies.

What to do?

Pay attention to those internal conversations.
Stop the inner critic and negative voice in three steps:
Pause, breathe, and get curious.

Pause. When you pause, you step back for a moment. In stepping back, you have the opportunity to recognize you are not your thoughts and inner comments. You are simply having them, which means you can choose to have different thoughts.

Breathe. Take a few deep belly breaths. This too gives you distance from the thoughts and it has a calming effect on the nervous system, giving you just enough space to ask a question.

Get Curious. This is how you begin to shift your thinking. Ask yourself a few generative questions, one’s that help you shift your thinking:

• Am I tired? Hungry?
Overwhelmed? What do I need right now?

• What do I want to happen?

• What assumptions am I making?

• What can I do to influence what actually happens?

• Are my beliefs about a situation true? Am I sure? Absolutely sure?

• What’s really important right now?

• Who might help? What might I ask for?

• What might be going on for the other person? What else might explain their behavior?

Curiosity naturally shifts your brain chemistry. Just asking questions like these and sincerely entertaining them, will loosen the grip that stressful thinking has. Pay attention to the new thinking that emerges. Watch for opportunities to ask questions that create compelling positive images of what you would like to have happen, such as opportunities for real connection, a focus on love and care, or dinner conversations that inspire and connect everyone.

Conversations at Family Gatherings

Speaking of dinner conversations. Conflicting views on politics can turn an otherwise happy occasion into an acid stomach and a “Thank goodness that’s over for another year!” experience. This year try something different. Instead of attempting to make sure touchy topics don’t arise, pause, breathe and get curious. While everyone else is still holding their breath, turn that controversial comment into a conversation worth having by asking questions. Ask generative questions: questions that shift the way people think, deepen understanding and connection, and shine the light on the thinking and feeling behind the comment. Regardless of who says it or which side of the political arena they are on, you can invite them to go deeper. If someone offers a bold and profound statement about one party or the other, or some event, come from a place of genuine curiosity:

• What makes you think that?

• What do you think is really go on?

• What do you think is in the best interests of our country?

• What’s most important to you in all of this and why?

• How might we find a pathway forward that unites us?

• Where do you get your information and how do you fact check? How can we know if our fact checker is legit?

• Underneath all of this, what are we really most afraid of or concerned about?

• If you were in charge, what would you do?

Each of these questions might be answered by multiple people leading to a discussion that just might turn into a conversation worth having.

Alternatively, start your own conversations about what’s important at the local level. People might have controversial answers, but you can frame the conversations in ways that allow you to keep coming back to an outcome that works for everyone. When objections are raised, return to, “Yes, but what if we could . . .. Imagine that . . . How might we . . .”

May your holidays be filled with joy and opportunities to continuous move towards connections and
outcomes that work for all of us.

3 Practices to GET AHEAD at Work

by Cheri Torres | Oct 31, 2019 | Asheville, Conversation, Management

By Cheri Torres

No matter where you are in your organization, you can make a difference and get noticed. If you’re in management, you can fuel productivity and meaningful engagement. If you’re on the front line, you can inspire teamwork and creativity. You can even address issues with your boss effectively. You can do all of this through conversation.

We forget how powerful our conversations are. They influence our wellbeing, relationships, and ability to succeed. Become a conversation change agent and you will become a valued member of your organization. There are three simple practices that will help you catalyze conversations worth having.

#1: Pause, Breathe, Get Curious

How often do you feel defensive, annoyed, or critical of your colleagues or boss? They do something and you get triggered. This natural response to stress or threat is normal, but not helpful. This first practice is: PAUSE before reacting. Take a deep breath. And get curious: Why are you defensive? Have you made assumptions? Are you sure what you think is true? Absolutely sure?

Example: you’re walking down the hallway toward your boss. As you pass by, you smile and say, “Hi!” She says nothing; she is scowling. You feel rejected, and think, “She’s arrogant.” Fear creeps: What if she didn’t like the report you just turned in. You’re starting to make up stories.

Let’s apply Practice #1. Pause. Breathe and recognize that you just got triggered. Then get curious:

1. What are the facts? You said “Hi!” She didn’t answer. Her face had an unhappy-kind-of-expression. She didn’t say anything. You got triggered. That’s it. Everything else is made up.

2. What else might explain those facts? She was lost in thought and didn’t hear you. She just heard bad news. She was headed to a meeting she was worried about. She’s not feeling well.

3. Question assumptions. Has she even read your report yet? Is she an arrogant person?

Just asking yourself these few questions can shift your thinking and feeling. Genuine curiosity emerges: Is she okay? Is there anything you can do to support her?

You can use this practice to help you shift from self-protection to connection. You can also use it to shift meeting dynamics. Imagine your team is arguing. You might say, “Let’s pause. Can we take a moment to get the facts up on the board and begin to see what we know and don’t know?” Once that’s done, you might say, “I’m not as clear as I thought I was. What outcome are we hoping for?” Just these simple questions can shift the tone and direction of the original conversation.

#2: Ask Generative Questions

Generative questions shift the way people think. In the above examples, your thinking about your boss and your team’s thinking shifted because of the nature of the questions. Generative questions also create compelling images that inspire action. Once all the facts are on the whiteboard and you have a shared understanding of the outcome, you might ask a question that creates compelling images such as, “How might we move towards our desired outcome?”

Generative questions typically result in:

1. Stronger relationships because people take time to ask one another questions that create connection, inclusion, and understanding.

2. New information and new knowledge because asking questions has surfaced facts, challenged assumptions, and brought forth collective wisdom.

3. Possibilities for solutions and actions because people ask questions that enable divergent and creative thinking.

4. Images of the future because people ask questions about desired outcomes.

#3: Create a Positive Frame

The last practice is to talk about what you want instead of what you don’t want. When there are problems or complaints, flip the focus to desired outcomes. For example, if your staff is complaining, instead of asking them, “What’s wrong?” Ask them, “What would you like to see change? What might we do to improve things?”

If you need to address a problem with your boss, you are not likely to point out what he is doing wrong. Instead, create a positive frame for the conversation and ask generative questions. Example: Imagine you keep getting last minute assignments at the end of the day. You might frame a conversation with your boss around wanting to excel in the job. You might ask generative questions like, “What ideas do you have to help me be successful when you give me assignments?” and “If I have questions I want to ask to make sure we’re on the same page about the outcome of my work, when is the best time for me to ask?” Then engage in a conversation that ensures you are able to meet or exceed his expectations.

No matter what is happening in your organization or where you sit hierarchically, you can make a positive difference simply by fostering conversations worth having. And when you do, you will be noticed!

Cheri Torres is Lead Catalyst for positive change and organization consultant with Collaborative by Design. Visit ConversationsWorthHaving.today to download a free Conversation Toolkit, or visit cheritorres.com.

Complaining about the Men in our Lives

by Cheri Torres | Oct 1, 2019 | Asheville, relationships, Therapy

By Cheri Torres

A friend of mine noted, many older women don’t seem to like their husbands. They complain about them . . . all the time. She noticed these women seemed lonely and loveless even though their partner was still present.

My experience with women of all ages is that conversations about the men in our lives often turn to mutual complaining. We seem to enjoy these conversations, as they affirm we are not alone, confirm we are not crazy, and strengthen our bonds with friends, daughters, mothers, and grandmothers.

Given what I now know about the power of conversation, I can’t help but think that such conversations are lethal to loving relationships. Here’s what I know about conversation (backed up by research across multiple disciplines):

We create our relationships through conversation and shared meaning-making.

Our internal and external conversations influence our expectations and assumptions, which govern our perceptions of reality.

What we focus on grows; what we talk about takes shape.

The questions we ask and the images we conjure are fateful: they become our reality.

We need to be asking ourselves: What kind of relationships do we want with the men in our lives? If we want close and loving relationships, then we need to have different conversations. We need to ask questions that deepen our love and affection for one another. We need to have conversations about raising, educating, and nurturing boys in different ways.

But what about all those irritating things they do? OMG, surely, we can talk about those!

You can talk about anything. Just be aware that your conversations are directly influencing your relationships and their overall health. If your partner does things that irritate you, talk with your partner about it, not your friends . . . unless you are asking for ideas. Friends who can share stories of successful conversations about the same issue are valuable! That’s a complaint conversation worth having!

Engaging in these conversations is almost irresistible. The reason is biochemical; complaining with other women juices us. The flood of stress hormones associated with thinking about the negative things men do (cortisol, norepinephrine, and testosterone) strengthens us. At the same time, we are flooded with the love/happiness hormones (oxytocin, endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine) because we are safe and fully aligned with our tribe of women. We feel good and strong; and many of us don’t often feel that way. Still, we might want to consider the price we may be paying for such conversations.

How might we turn these conversations into ones worth having? Conversations that support us in creating positive change in our relationship when it’s needed as well as nurturing healthy growth and development. How do we share our success stories around changing behavior (including our own), letting things go, or having valuable conversations with boys and men? How might we turn the dialogue towards understanding? What might we do at the non-personal level to resolve our issues (e.g., family dynamics, school and societal structures)?

Here are two simple practices you can use to shift these conversations in your life:

Ask one another generative questions. A generative question shifts the focus of attention; it changes thinking. For example:

What would you like to have happen?

What might he do that would be helpful?

What’s going on for you when that happens?

How do I help my son develop his nurturing, relational side?

How do you and your partner handle this?

I wonder how successful relationships navigate this?

Create a positive frame. Frame conversations around what you want (for yourself, for the other, for the relationship) instead of what you don’t want. For example,

Instead of dirty clothes on the floor, talk about creative ways to get clothes in the hamper.

Instead of every little thing that’s bothering you, talk about how you let the things that don’t matter, go.

Instead of talking about how terrible your relationships is, talk about the best parts of your relationship (even if there are only a few).

Instead of talking about the men in our society who are predators, talk about how we create a world of caring and balanced men. Where is this already happening? How do we uplift the men working in these areas?

Of course, there are times when it is important to share the negative. If you are in danger, if you are being emotionally abused, neglected, or in a bad relationship, by all means have those conversations with your friends. In these cases, ask questions that deepen understanding and connection and frame your conversations around supporting your friend in being safe and getting appropriate help and guidance. These are also conversations worth having.

The majority of our negative conversations, however, don’t verge on divorce or destruction. Instead, we engage in empathizing and commiserating because it feels good. We are well advised to make this decision consciously instead of leaving it up to whim, as whim is likely to have us growing old and being lonely even though our partner is present.

Learn more at

ConversationsWorthHaving.today.

Back to School… Not as Usual

by Cheri Torres | Aug 29, 2019 | Asheville, Collaborative Learning, Psychology

By Cheri Torres

Summer’s over, kids are back in school. What if this year we make it a remarkably different year for our kids—all our kids? What if we contribute to their happiness and learning every time we talk to them? How?

Research in the areas of positive education, positive psychology, and neuroscience tells us why our conversations are so important. Our brains are wired for two dominant activities. The first and primary activity of the brain is to keep us safe. Our nervous system is always scanning incoming stimuli for safety: Have I experienced this before? Will this harm me? If the answer is yes or maybe, our protect system is triggered. Stress hormones are released: cortisol, norepinephrine, testosterone, adrenalin. The more threatening the stimulus, the greater the chemical dump as our body and brain prepare to fight, flee, freeze, or appease. Neuroscience has shown that this biochemical reaction literally inhibits development of, and access to, the pre-frontal lobe and neocortex. When we need it most, our creativity and critical thinking are unavailable.

The other dominant activity our brain is wired for is learning and creativity. Barbara Fredrickson, a UNC Chapel Hill Professor, has shown that learning (and thriving) takes place in the context of positive emotions such as love, interest, happiness, contentment, curiosity, empathy, compassion, and care. Her research shows that these emotions broaden and build our capacity for learning, creativity, and connection with others. These functions take place in the pre-frontal lobe and neocortex. Neuroscience tells us that an entirely different set of hormones are necessary for us to develop and access higher order thinking centers. They are known as the love/happiness hormones: oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins. These hormones help us connect to our higher order thinking capacities, long term memory, and creativity. They also give us greater access to empathy and connection with others.

If we want all children to grow, learn, and thrive, then we need to create environments that fuel the production of the happiness/love hormones. This is required for pre-frontal and neocortex neurological development and access. One of the primary ways we do this–or not–is through every day communication. For teachers and parents this is critical information; your words are more than words. They carry the power to ignite learning and growth, or suppress it. This may sound like a lot of responsibility. It is. The conversations we have trigger protect or nurture connect (for everyone, including ourselves). We can choose to nurture connect, even in the most challenging of situations.

Two simple practices will support you in doing this: generative questions and positive framing. Generative questions change the way people think, and they create compelling images that move us to action. For example, if a child is acting out, instead of making quick judgments and admonishing the child, you might pause first and ask yourself: What might be going on for the child that’s resulting in this behavior? This might encourage you to look at their actions in the larger context causing you to further wonder: Are they stressed about the test? Did something happen at lunch? What might have happened at home before they arrived? These questions shift your thinking about the child. Such curiosity is a positive emotion; you yourself begin to have greater access to your pre-frontal cortex. From that place, you are more likely to respond with compassion, curiosity, and care, which in turn will have a different impact on the child. You might simply ask, with genuine curiosity, “What’s going on for you today?”

The second practice is positive framing. Talk about what you want instead of what you don’t want. Instead of telling kids what not to do, have a conversation about the outcomes you want and invite them to identify what they need to do to achieve that outcome. They just might surprise you with their creativity and awareness. For example, a mother was frustrated by continuous arguments with her son about driving around with friends and not letting her know where he was going. She kept demanding he let her know and he kept deflecting that he didn’t always know, and she should just trust him! Then, she learned about positive framing and generative questions. First, she asked herself: Why do I want to know where he is all the time? What is it I really want? Do I trust him? She realized what she wanted was the assurance he was safe. So that’s how she framed the next conversation. She opened with, “I realize I just want to know you are safe when you’re out with your friends. I totally trust you, but I don’t fully trust a couple of your friends. What can we do so you can have your freedom and I know you’re safe?” The whole conversation shifted. He shared that he didn’t want her to worry and he knew exactly which friends she was talking about. They arrived at a solution that allowed both of them to get their needs met and they did it together.

This year, make it a year where you help every child you interact with grow, learn, and thrive. Commit to having conversations worth having with them. For a free Conversation Toolkit, including a parent page on questions to ask your kids and questions to ask your children’s teachers visit

ConversationsWorthHaving.today.

Cheri Torres is a Lead Catalyst for positive change and organization consultant with Collaborative by Design.

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