Field Guide

Each page covers one part of hosting and links to a drill. Start where your last conversation went wrong.

The Palette

A palette of conversational moves for study and absorption.

Five Working Principles

The answer is the material; shortest question, largest space; concrete before abstract; followed and guided; silence is a move.

Disambiguation

Near Neighbors

Clusters of moves that are easy to confuse, and the lines that separate them.

Architecture

The hour

Structure

Six spines for six occasions, and ten transitions between phases.

How many

Size

What changes as the table grows, including the limits of intimacy, unity, and spontaneity.

How it flows

Shape

Host positions, from examiner to witness, with an eye-line diagnostic.

The room’s rules

Cultural Registers

Eight dimensions along which tables differ by culture, and how to calibrate live.

Flow

First 90 seconds

Openings

Opening forms and common failures.

The instrument

Questions

Question families and repairs for weak forms.

The other prompts

Beyond Questions

Six prompt forms that are not questions, and when a question is the wrong tool.

The cut

Interruption

Constructive and destructive cuts — fifteen types, each mapped to moves and a filmed exhibit.

The instrument

Vocal Energy

Forty-five energies under the words, in six families, each with the near enemies that pass for it.

Ornament

Figures

The classical figures of speech in a host’s hands, and the one refused.

The other half

Listening

Listening channels and a follow-up ladder.

Diagnosis

The Three Differences

Claim, perspective, or taste — and the different hosting each one takes.

Heat

Provocation

Supplying the claim a flat table needs: three safe shapes, dosage, and the bans.

The rudder

Deciding

The declarative default, handoffs as task plus intent, and the price of push-back.

Hard mode

The Guarded Guest

Non-adversarial responses to scripts, slogans, charm, and deflection.

Reference

A to Z

Glossary

Moves, groups, explorations, games, forms, channels, phases, and shapes, A to Z.

What goes wrong

Anti-Patterns

The recognizable failures of hosting, named and paired with their repairs.

The older art

Classical Rhetoric

The five canons mapped to this site — what carries over, and what does not.