Translate positions
Asks what concern, value, fear, or need the stated demand is trying to protect.
practice-based lens · v1
Conflict mediation on needs and power
Move beneath fixed positions toward interests and needs while refusing to pretend that power, safety, and coercion are evenly distributed.
A lens never answers for you. It helps you see the question that your perspective alone might miss.
01 / attention
What this lens helps you notice.
These are the visible attention shifts projected into ask’s Question Genome.
Map the power
Makes alternatives, dependency, authority, voice, safety, and the ability to walk away explicit.
Build a workable process
Tests what conditions, sequence, representation, and safeguards could support an honest exchange.
02 / question moves
How it changes the next question.
The lens influences where ask looks. The question still belongs to you.
- 01Clarify the territory
What important need is each position trying to protect?
Asks what concern, value, fear, or need the stated demand is trying to protect.
- 02Test the frame
Who can safely say no here, and who cannot?
Makes alternatives, dependency, authority, voice, safety, and the ability to walk away explicit.
- 03Open a next move
What process would make the next conversation honest enough to matter?
Tests what conditions, sequence, representation, and safeguards could support an honest exchange.
03 / genome projection
No mystery score.
The translation layer is inspectable: source patterns become attention territories, then question moves.
Named, linked, and open to inspection.
Translate positions · Map the power · Build a workable process
Three movements, each changed by the lens.
04 / boundaries
What this lens does not claim.
Trust begins where the interpretation stops pretending to be total.
- 01
This is a source-grounded interpretation, not a simulation of a person or a claim to know what they would say.
- 02
The lens changes what ask notices and tests; it does not supply an answer or override your judgment.
- 03
Sources are bounded and visible. Missing work, context, and disagreement remain part of the lens.
05 / source index
Inspect the material.
Every lens should show what shaped it, what is missing, and when it changed.
- S1What is Interest-Based Negotiation? ↗
Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School
- S2Power in Negotiation ↗
Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School
bring it into ask