The work you do before the meeting, usually with your coach
A deep dive presentation runs about an hour, and how deep it goes has less to do with the hour than with the work you do before it. Fill this out ahead of the meeting, ideally in a short conversation with your coach. The clearer you are here, the less time the group spends working out what you're asking, and the more time they spend helping.
One rule before you start: keep the history short. The group doesn't need the whole file. The twenty percent that matters is plenty.
1. The situation.
What do you want to bring to the group? A sentence or two.
2. What kind of situation is it?
Mark any that fit.
3. What you need from the group.
The heart of it. Fill in all three.
The ask. Where you're stuck or can't see clearly, and what you actually want from the hour.
What you won't get into. The parts you've already settled or don't want reopened.
What's outside your control. Obstacles the group can't change, so no one spends the hour trying.
4. Just enough history.
Three or four points, only what someone needs to follow where you are. Resist the urge to tell all of it.
5. Where it stands now.
What you're dealing with this week, today.
6. What makes it hard.
The knot. The thing that complicates it.
7. What weighs on you most.
The part that stays with you when you're not thinking about it.
8. How you feel about it.
Three to five words. Feelings, not thoughts.
9. Where the growth is.
What is this situation asking you to work on? Not just the problem out there, but the challenge to you.
10. What you're hoping for.
The outcome you want, as specific as you can make it. Then, how confident you are you'll get there, from zero to a hundred percent.
Confidence (0 to 100%): ____________
11. The kind of help you want.
Pick one.
About the Blind Window
The Blind Window is an optional way to run the hour, and it's the one that reaches what you can't see about yourself. You turn your chair away from the group. For about ten minutes, the others talk about you as if you'd left the room, honestly, as themselves. You just listen. Then you turn back and share, briefly, what you heard that you hadn't known.
It takes trust, and it tends to reach the blind spots the other two formats circle around.
Going deeper
Optional. For the presenter who wants more than the basics.
The questions on the first pages are enough to prepare. If you want to go further, sit with these five, before you present, or after the meeting once the group has given you their experience. They turn the light on your own part in the thing, which is usually where the movement is. You don't need them to present.
1. The issue and the outcome.
What's the real challenge here, and what do you actually want to be different?
2. What you're avoiding.
What are you unwilling, unable, or afraid to face about this?
3. What you haven't said.
The truths you haven't spoken out loud, to yourself or to anyone.
4. Your part in it.
Where have you been blaming others or circumstances? What's your own responsibility in creating or keeping this going?
5. Options and risks.
What paths are open to you, and what does each one risk?