The three-word icebreaker that beat small talk

This past Thursday I co-hosted an event in Chicago with Sara Connell and Genesis Krick, held at ALTAR, a space built entirely around women holding space for each other. Sara, Genesis, and I met at Called to Lead last year, and this gathering was essentially a CTL pop-up. We didn’t even give it a real name. Just called it a women’s leadership mixer and let the room do the rest.

The room was a mix. Some women I’d worked closely with for months and, in some cases, years, people whose work I know inside and out from calls and emails and Slack threads. Others I barely knew, a name I recognized from a comment or a shared connection. And some I was meeting for the first time in every sense, online or off. Almost everyone in that room, though, I was meeting in person for the first time that day.

We opened with an icebreaker I hadn’t used before: rose, bud, leaf. Your rose is your big vision, the thing you’re building toward. Your bud is a success you’ve had, something already blooming that’s worth naming out loud. Your leaf is where you need support right now.

Three words. No warm-up small talk about traffic or the weather. And within two minutes, we were having the kind of conversation that usually takes an hour to earn.

That’s the part I keep thinking about. We default to surface-level check-ins because they feel safe, but they mostly just delay the real conversation. Rose, bud, leaf skips straight past it, on purpose, and gives everyone permission to say the true thing without having to work up to it.

The afternoon itself was a case study in what happens when you finally sit across from people instead of scrolling past them. Women I’d been on calls with for a year, whose work I know inside and out, suddenly became people I actually know. Women I’d only ever exchanged a comment or two with turned into real conversations. And the women I was meeting completely fresh became people I’m already following up with. The follow-ups we left with weren’t vague “let’s stay in touch” promises. They were concrete: real projects, real next steps, the kind that only show up once trust has a body attached to it.

Where this shows up in money conversations, too:

Your financial rose. The big vision, the number, the milestone, the version of your life you’re actually building toward, not just this month’s budget.

Your financial bud. A win you’ve already had. The habit that stuck, the account that grew, the decision that’s paying off. It’s easy to skip past this one. Say it out loud instead.

Your financial leaf. Where you need support right now: the account you’ve been avoiding, the conversation you keep putting off, the number you haven’t looked at. Naming it isn’t a failure. It’s the first step toward tending it.

I’d rather ask a client “what’s your leaf right now” than “how are things going.” One gets a real answer. The other gets a fine.

If you host any kind of check-in, a team meeting, a family dinner, a friend group chat, try trading the small talk for rose, bud, leaf this week. See how fast the real conversation shows up.

Two ways to keep this going:

Sara, Genesis, and I met each other at Called to Lead hosted by Kelly Roach and Sandi Glandt, and this year’s event is on October 1st. If a room like the one I just described sounds like something you want to be in, come join me there (that’s my affiliate link, and yes, I’ll be there).

And if what you want is an ongoing version of that room, not just one day, that’s exactly what the Empowered Sisterhood is for. It’s a space to keep casting vision for each other’s roses, celebrate each other’s buds, and show up for each other’s leaves.