The centerpiece

The Hosting Palette

Six moves cover most of what a host does in the moment. You don't need all six at once — a conversation usually turns on doing one of them at the right time. The palette is a menu to choose from, not a checklist to complete.

How to work with it

Before

Constrain yourself

Pick one or two moves to feature in your next conversation — or let Palette Draw deal them to you. A constraint sharpens attention more than a resolution to "listen better."

During

Notice the opening

Each move has a trigger: sprawl calls for Redirecting; two people blurring calls for Surfacing Difference; abstraction calls for an Example; jargon calls for the Naive Question. The skill is spotting the trigger, not memorizing stems.

After

Count what you used

Which moves did you actually make? Which trigger did you notice and let pass? Mark used moves in Palette Draw and they accumulate on your progress page — over weeks you'll see which moves you avoid.

The moves are cheap to say and hard to time. All six games and drills on this site exist to lower the cost of reaching for one at speed.

Train each move

Move	Primary drill	Also trained by
Redirecting	Move Roulette	Bridge Builder, Table Timer (time discipline)
Surfacing Difference	Move Roulette	Thread Spotting (contradiction channel)
Finding Relevance	Move Roulette	Rapid Repair ("who is changed if this is true?")
Extracting an Example	Move Roulette	Steel Return (specific case vs. slogan)
Recapping	Recap in One	Move Roulette
The Naive Question	The Naive Ear	Move Roulette

Related: the listening channels tell you when a move is available; the palette tells you what to do about it.