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Crucial Conversations. Mireya Santos. A short summary of this paper. I have found all of these elements in Crucial Conversations. The narrative has a universal appeal and the strength to transcend cultures. I have found it to align closely with Indian values. The skills in Crucial Conversations make this world safe enough for humans to express themselves in crucial moments.
For the first time in my life, I have the courage to talk to almost anyone about almost anything. Crucial Conversations is one of the most important books I have ever read. I am convinced that if people could read any book that crosses boundaries for skills in team building, performance management, conflict resolution, problem solving, etc. Crucial Conversations changed some of my destructive communication styles at home and at work.
I attribute the impact it has had on my life to the fact that skills are derived from solid empirical data of social science research. Crucial Conversations is truly a life-changing book. Using Crucial Conversations as my playbook during this time was paramount in guiding me through each conversation. After reading Crucial Conversations, I felt prepared to talk to anyone about nearly anything.
This book has made my first year as a school administrator a great success. I wish I could have read this book thirty years ago. I am so thankful to be a part of something so life-changing and truly hope to pass it forward whenever I get the opportunity.
It clarified exactly how you can change the way you react in different moments to get different results. I have regained a strong, loving relationship with my son by using the skills I learned from reading Crucial Conversations.
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Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting there from. McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work. This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise. We dedicate this book to Louise, Celia, Bonnie, and Linda— whose support is abundant, whose love is nourishing, and whose patience is just shy of infinite.
And Who Cares? I learned a lot from this book ten years ago when the authors first sent me the manuscript. But this book goes even broader and deeper into the fundamental principles of high-stakes communication.
It deals with the whole dynamic of crucial conversations in a wonderfully comprehensive way. But even more important, it draws our attention to those defining moments that literally shape our lives, shape our relationships, and shape our world.
They are superior people, great teachers, and master trainers. They have created a remarkably synergistic team that has endured for over twenty years. That says a lot about their ability to have crucial conversations themselves. In addition, they have created a world-class organization, VitalSmarts, that has become an engine of leadership, relationship, and personal change material that has influenced many millions of lives around the world.
The culture of their organization is a stellar reflection of all they teach in this volume—and is evidence of the efficacy of these principles. I write this with my best wishes that the work of this fine team will continue to influence the world for many years to come. That is exactly how I saw it when I first read the manuscript. I so resonated with the importance, power, and timeliness of its message.
This book is an apt response to the wisdom of the great historian Arnold Toynbee, who said that you can pretty well summarize all of history—not only of society, but of institutions and of people—in four words: Nothing fails like success. In other words, when a challenge in life is met by a response that is equal to it, you have success.
But when the challenge moves to a higher level, the old, once successful response no longer works —it fails; thus, nothing fails like success. The challenge has noticeably changed our lives, our families, and our organizations. Just as the world is changing at frightening speed and has become increasingly and profoundly interdependent with marvelous and dangerous technologies, so, too, have the stresses and pressures we all experience increased exponentially.
This charged atmosphere makes it all the more imperative that we nourish our relationships and develop tools, skills, and enhanced capacity to find new and better solutions to our problems. Such synergy may manifest itself in a better decision, a better relationship, a better decision-making process, increased commitment to implement decisions made, or a combination of two or more of these.
They are anything but transacted; they create an entirely new level of bonding. Because two or more people have created something new from genuine dialogue, bonding takes place, just like the bonding that takes place in a family or marriage when a new child is created. In fact the bonding is so strong that you simply would not be disloyal in his or her absence, even if there were social pressure to join others in bad-mouthing.
The sequential development of the subject matter in this book is brilliant. It moves you from understanding the supernal power of dialogue, to clarifying what you really want to have happen and focusing on what actually is happening, to creating conditions of safety, to using self-awareness and self-knowledge. And finally, it moves you to learning how to achieve such a level of mutual understanding and creative synergy that people are emotionally connected to the conclusions reached and are emotionally willing and committed to effectively implementing them.
In short, you move from creating the right mind- and heart-set to developing and utilizing the right skill-set. In spite of the fact that I have spent many years writing and teaching similar ideas, I found myself being deeply influenced, motivated, and even inspired by this material—learning new ideas, going deeper into old ideas, seeing new applications, and broadening my understanding. They show how to effectively blend and use both intellectual I.
I remember one of the authors having a crucial conversation with his professor in college. The professor felt that this student was neither paying the price in class nor living up to his potential. I hope you can understand. A dialogue took place, new understanding was achieved, and the bonding was deepened. They did. I encourage you to really dig into this material, to pause and think deeply about each part and how the parts are sequenced. Remember, to know and not to do is really not to know.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
We argued that the root cause of many—if not most—human problems lies in how people behave when others disagree with them about high-stakes, emotional issues.
If anything, our conviction in this principle has grown in the subsequent decade. A growing body of research evidence shows that when leaders invest in creating a Crucial Conversations culture, nuclear power plants are safer, financial services firms gain greater customer loyalty, hospitals save more lives, government organizations deliver dramatically improved service, and tech firms learn to function seamlessly across international boundaries.
One of the first was a woman who reunited with her estranged father after reading the book. One intrepid reader even credits her Crucial Conversations training with helping save her life during a carjacking in Brazil. But the changes we are most excited about include summaries of important new research; powerful reader stories that illustrate key principles; links to fun, memorable, and illuminating videos; and an afterword with new personal insights from each of the authors. We are confident that these changes will not only improve your reading experience, they will also increase your capacity to turn the printed word into productive habits in your work and personal life.
To be honest, ten years ago we dared to hope the ideas we shared would alter the world. We had great confidence that changing the way people handle their crucial moments could produce a better future for organizations, individuals, families, and nations.
So far so good. It has been immensely gratifying to see so many people embrace the notion that crucial conversations really can make a difference. The day we held in our hands two copies of our book—one in Arabic and one in Hebrew—gave us an even greater sense of possibility. With each new audience and each new success story we feel a greater motivation to ensure our work makes a lasting difference.
Thus the new edition. We hope the improvements in this edition substantially improve your experience with these life-changing ideas. Simply log on to www. Acknowledgments Our gratitude for the contribution of many fine colleagues has grown as our work has expanded around the world.
We invite you to join with us in thanking some of those who not only have helped us take these ideas to millions in dozens of languages, but who also have shaped the ideas far more effectively than we could have without them.
Now, what makes one of your conversations crucial as opposed to plain vanilla? First, opinions vary. Second, stakes are high. Third, emotions run strong. You simply remember being polite and friendly. Your spouse walks off in a huff. Three inches!
Emotions run really strong. What makes each of these conversations crucial—and not simply challenging, frustrating, frightening, or annoying—is that the results could have a huge impact on the quality of your life. In each case, some element of your daily routine could be forever altered for better or worse. Clearly a promotion could make a big difference. Your relationship with your spouse influences every aspect of your life.
Even something as trivial as a debate over a property line affects how you get along with your neighbor. Coworkers send e-mail to each other when they should walk down the hall and talk turkey. Bosses leave voice mail in lieu of meeting with their direct reports. Family members change the subject when an issue gets too risky. We the authors have a friend who learned through a voice-mail message that his wife was divorcing him. We use all kinds of tactics to dodge touchy issues. Watch as the new associate, Michael, causes a scene in front of a client.
How would you handle this crucial conversation? To watch this video, visit www. If you know how to handle crucial conversations, you can effectively hold tough conversations about virtually any topic. That seems simple enough. Walk away from crucial conversations and suffer the consequences. Handle them poorly and suffer the consequences.
Or handle them well. Sometimes we boldly step up to hot topics, monitor our behavior, and offer up our best work. We mind our Ps and Qs. And then we have the rest of our lives.
Why is that? Countless generations of genetic shaping drive humans to handle crucial conversations with flying fists and fleet feet, not intelligent persuasion and gentle attentiveness. For instance, consider a typical crucial conversation. Someone says something you disagree with about a topic that matters a great deal to you and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
The hairs you can handle. Unfortunately, your body does more. Two tiny organs seated neatly atop your kidneys pump adrenaline into your bloodstream. Your adrenal glands do it, and then you have to live with it. Your brain then diverts blood from activities it deems nonessential to high-priority tasks such as hitting and running.
Unfortunately, as the large muscles of the arms and legs get more blood, the higher-level reasoning sections of your brain get less. As a result, you end up facing challenging conversations with the same intellectual equipment available to a rhesus monkey. Your body is preparing to deal with an attacking saber-toothed tiger, not your boss, neighbor, or loved ones.
Crucial conversations are frequently spontaneous. More often than not, they come out of nowhere. What do you have to work with? Will you succeed? Not necessarily. This means that first you have to know what to practice.
After all, you may have never actually seen how a certain problem is best handled. You may have seen what not to do—as modeled by a host of friends, colleagues, and, yes, even your parents. In fact, you may have sworn time and again not to act the same way. So what do you do? You do what most people do. You wing it. You piece together the words, create a certain mood, and otherwise make up what you think will work—all the while multiprocessing with a half-starved brain.
We act in self-defeating ways. In our doped-up, dumbed-down state, the strategies we choose for dealing with our crucial conversations are perfectly designed to keep us from what we actually want. You realize he or she has a busy job, but you still would like more time together.
You decide not to put on added pressure, so you clam up. So your significant other spends even less time with you, you become even more upset, and the spiral continues. In fact, one day while walking out the door, he glibly announced that he was wearing something from each of your closets.
What of yours could he possibly be wearing? Your response, quite naturally, has been to bad-mouth Terry behind his back. Your coworker has left you notes written in grease pencil on your file cabinet, in catsup on the back of a french-fry bag, and in permanent marker on your desk blotter.
You, in contrast, leave him printed Post-it notes. At first you sort of tolerated each other. You started nagging him about cleaning up. He started nagging you about your nagging. What has come from all this bickering? The more the two of you push each other, the more you create the very behaviors you both despise. Actually, to be honest, in a couple of the examples the stakes were fairly low at first, but with time and growing emotions, the relationship eventually turned sour and quality of life suffered—making the risks high.
These examples, of course, are merely the tip of an enormous and ugly iceberg of problems stemming from crucial conversations that either have been avoided or have gone wrong. How high are the stakes? This is just talk, right? Do the consequences of a fouled-up conversation extend beyond the conversation itself?
Should you worry? Actually, the effects of conversations gone bad can be both devastating and far reaching. Our research has shown that strong relationships, careers, organizations, and communities all draw from the same source of power—the ability to talk openly about high-stakes, emotional, controversial topics.
Twenty years of research involving more than , people reveals that the key skill of effective leaders, teammates, parents, and loved ones is the capacity to skillfully address emotionally and politically risky issues. Here are just a few examples of these fascinating findings. Kick-Start Your Career Could the ability to master crucial conversations help your career?
Twenty-five years of research in seventeen different organizations has taught us that individuals who are the most influential—who can get things done and at the same time build on relationships—are those who master their crucial conversations. For instance, high performers know how to stand up to the boss without committing career suicide.
You may have done it yourself. Fed up with a lengthy and unhealthy pattern of behavior, you finally speak out— but a bit too abruptly. Or maybe an issue becomes so hot that as your peers twitch and fidget themselves into a quivering mass of potential stroke victims, you decide to say something. People who routinely hold crucial conversations and hold them well are able to express controversial and even risky opinions in a way that gets heard. Their bosses, peers, and direct reports listen without becoming defensive or angry.
What about your career? Is this undermining your influence? Study after study suggests that the answer is yes. We began our work twenty-five years ago looking for what we called crucial moments.
It was that search that led us to crucial conversations. We found that more often than not, the world changes when people have to deal with a very risky issue and either do it poorly or do it well. For example: Silence kills. A doctor is getting ready to insert a central IV line into a patient but fails to put on the proper gloves, gown, and mask to ensure the procedure is done as safely as possible.
In fact, 84 percent of respondents said that they regularly see people taking shortcuts, exhibiting incompetence, or breaking rules. The real problem is that those who observe deviations or infractions say nothing. Silence fails. When it comes to the corporate world, the most common complaint of executives and managers is that their people work in silos. They do great at tasks that are handled entirely within their team. Unfortunately, close to 80 percent of the projects that require cross-functional cooperation cost far more than expected, produce less than hoped for, and run significantly over budget.
We wondered why. So we studied over 2, projects and programs that had been rolled out at hundreds of organizations worldwide. The findings were stunning. You can predict with nearly 90 percent accuracy which projects will fail—months or years in advance. And now back to our premise. The predictor of success or failure was whether people could hold five specific crucial conversations.
For example, could they speak up if they thought the scope and schedule were unrealistic? Or did they go silent when a cross-functional team member began sloughing off? Or even more tricky—what should they do when an executive failed to provide leadership for the effort? In most organizations, employees fell silent when these crucial moments hit. Fortunately, in those organizations where people were able to candidly and effectively speak up about these concerns, the projects were less than half as likely to fail.
Once again, the presenting problems showed up in key performance indicators such as spiraling costs, late delivery times, and low morale.
Nevertheless, the underlying cause was the unwillingness or inability to speak up at crucial moments. Most leaders get it wrong. They think that organizational productivity and performance are simply about policies, processes, structures, or systems. Or when productivity flags, they tweak their performance management system.
Our research shows that these types of nonhuman changes fail more often than they succeed. The key to real change lies not in implementing a new process, but in getting people to hold one another accountable to the process. And that requires Crucial Conversations skills.
In the worst companies, poor performers are first ignored and then transferred. In good companies, bosses eventually deal with problems. In the best companies, everyone holds everyone else accountable—regardless of level or position. The path to high productivity passes not through a static system, but through face-to-face conversations.
So what about you? Is your organization stuck in its progress toward some important goal? And how about the people you work with? Are they stepping up to or walking away from crucial conversations? Could you take a big step forward by improving how you deal with these conversations?
See how Crucial Conversations skills helped a nuclear power plant in Texas become a national industry leader. Improve Your Relationships Consider the impact crucial conversations can have on your relationships. Could failed crucial conversations lead to failed relationships?
You know, people have different theories about how to manage their finances, spice up their love lives, or rear their children. In truth, everyone argues about important issues.
But not everyone splits up. For example, when our colleague, Howard Markman, examined couples in the throes of heated discussions, he learned that people fall into three categories—those who digress into threats and name-calling, those who revert to silent fuming, and those who speak openly, honestly, and effectively. Remarkably, they were able to predict nearly 90 percent of the divorces that occurred.
Now, what about you? Think of your own important relationships. Do you walk away from some issues only to come charging back into others? Do you hold in ugly opinions only to have them tumble out as sarcastic remarks or cheap shots?
How about your significant other or family members? Are they constantly toggling from seething silence to subtle but costly attacks? When it matters the most after all, these are your cherished loved ones , are you on your worst behavior? If so, you definitely have something to gain by learning more about how to handle crucial conversations. Immune systems. Consider the groundbreaking research done by Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Dr. Ronald Glaser. They studied the immune systems of couples who had been married an average of forty-two years by comparing those who argued constantly with those who resolved their differences effectively.
Quite the contrary. Those who routinely failed their crucial conversations had far weaker immune systems than those who found a way to resolve them well. Life-threatening diseases. In perhaps the most revealing of all the health-related studies, a group of subjects who had contracted malignant melanoma received traditional treatment and then were divided into two groups. One group met weekly for only six weeks; the other did not. Facilitators taught the first group of recovering patients specific communication skills.
After meeting only six times and then dispersing for five years, the subjects who learned how to express themselves effectively had a higher survival rate—only 9 percent succumbed as opposed to almost 30 percent in the untrained group.
Just a modest improvement in the ability to talk and connect with others corresponded to a two-thirds decrease in the death rate. We could go on for pages about how the ability to hold crucial conversations has an impact on your personal health.
The evidence is mounting every day. Nevertheless, most people find this claim a bit over the top. It could kill you? The longer answer suggests that the negative feelings we hold in, the emotional pain we suffer, and the constant battering we endure as we stumble our way through unhealthy conversations slowly eat away at our health.
In some cases the impact of failed conversations leads to minor problems. In others it results in disaster. In all cases, failed conversations never make us happier, healthier, or better off.
So how about you? What are the specific conversations that gnaw at you the most? Which conversations if you held them or improved them would strengthen your immune system, help ward off disease, and increase your quality of life and well-being?
Ironically, the more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to handle it well. The consequences of either avoiding or fouling up crucial conversations can be severe. When we fail a crucial conversation, every aspect of our lives can be affected—from our careers, to our communities, to our relationships, to our personal health. And now for the good news. As we learn how to step up to crucial conversations—and handle them well—with one set of high-leverage skills we can influence virtually every domain of our lives.
What is this all-important skill set? What do people who sail through crucial conversations actually do? More important, can we do it too? In fact, we started our research by studying a slightly different topic.
We figured that if we could learn why certain people were more effective than others, then we could learn exactly what they did, clone it, and pass it on to others.
To find the source of success, we started at work. We asked people to identify who they thought were their most effective colleagues. We wanted to find those who were not just influential, but who were far more influential than the rest. Each time, as we compiled the names into a list, a pattern emerged. Some people were named by one or two colleagues. Some found their way onto the lists of five or six people. These were the ones good at influence, but not good enough to be widely identified as top performers.
And then there were the handful who were named thirty or more times. These were the best—the clear opinion leaders in their areas. Some were managers and supervisors.
Many were not. One of the opinion leaders we became particularly interested in meeting was named Kevin. He was the only one of eight vice presidents in his company to be identified as exceedingly influential. We wanted to know why. So we watched him at work. In truth, he looked like every other VP. He answered his phone, talked to his direct reports, and continued about his pleasant, but routine, routine.
The Startling Discovery After trailing Kevin for almost a week, we began to wonder if he really did act in ways that set him apart from others or if his influence was simply a matter of popularity. And then we followed Kevin into a meeting. Kevin, his peers, and their boss were deciding on a new location for their offices—would they move across town, across the state, or across the country?
The first two execs presented their arguments for their top choices, and as expected, their points were greeted by penetrating questions from the full team. No vague claim went unclarified, no unsupported reasoning unquestioned. Then Chris, the CEO, pitched his preference—one that was both unpopular and potentially disastrous.
However, when people tried to disagree or push back on Chris, he responded poorly. Instead, he became slightly defensive. First he raised an eyebrow. Then he raised his finger. Finally he raised his voice—just a little. Well almost. But Kevin ignored the apparent terror of his colleagues and plunged on ahead. In the next few minutes he in essence told the CEO that he appeared to be violating his own decision-making guidelines.
He was subtly using his power to move the new offices to his hometown. Kevin continued to explain what he saw happening, and when he finished the first minutes of this delicate exchange, Chris was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded his head. Somehow he managed to achieve absolute candor, but he did so in a way that showed deep respect for Chris. It was a remarkable thing to watch. If you want to know how he gets things done, figure out what he just did. In fact, we spent the next twenty-five years discovering what Kevin and people like him do.
Almost everyone could see what was happening. They knew they were allowing themselves to be steamrolled into making a bad decision. But everyone besides Kevin believed they had to make a choice between two bad alternatives. The mistake most of us make in our crucial conversations is we believe that we have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend.
And the consequences can be disastrous. Consider Kevin, the all-star. We found them in industry, government, academia, and nonprofit organizations. They were fairly easy to locate because they were almost always among the most influential employees in their organizations. But what exactly did they do? He did step up to a tough issue and help the team make a better choice, but was what he did more magical than manageable?
Could what he did be learned by others? DIALOGUE When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information from themselves and others out into the open. At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of relevant information. People openly and honestly express their opinions, share their feelings, and articulate their theories.
They willingly and capably share their views, even when their ideas are controversial or unpopular. First, how does this free flow of meaning lead to success? Second, what can you do to encourage meaning to flow freely?
Filling the Pool of Shared Meaning Each of us enters conversations with our own opinions, feelings, theories, and experiences about the topic at hand. This unique combination of thoughts and feelings makes up our personal pool of meaning. This pool not only informs us, but also propels our every action. Our opinions differ. I believe one thing; you another. I have one history; you another. People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool—even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs.
As the Pool of Shared Meaning grows, it helps people in two ways. First, as individuals are exposed to more accurate and relevant information, they make better choices. The larger the shared pool, the smarter the decisions. And even though many people may be involved in a choice, when people openly and freely share ideas, the increased time investment is more than offset by the quality of the decision.
When people purposefully withhold meaning from one another, individually smart people can do collectively stupid things. For example, a client of ours shared the following story.
A woman checked into the hospital to have a tonsillectomy, and the surgical team erroneously removed a portion of her foot. How could this tragedy happen? In fact, why is it that nearly , hospital deaths in the United States each year stem from human error?
In this case, no less than seven people wondered why the surgeon was working on the foot, but said nothing. In every instance where bosses are smart, highly paid, confident, and outspoken i. As everyone on the team began to explain his or her opinion, people formed a clearer and more complete picture of the circumstances.
As they began to understand the whys and wherefores of different proposals, they built off one another. Eventually, as one idea led to the next, and then to the next, they came up with an alternative that no one had originally thought of and that all wholeheartedly supported. As a result of the free flow of meaning, the whole final choice was truly greater than the sum of the original parts.
In short: The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy. Not only does a shared pool help individuals make better choices, but since the meaning is shared, people willingly act on whatever decisions they make—with both unity and conviction.
As people sit through an open discussion where ideas are shared, they take part in the free flow of meaning.
Since their ideas remain in their heads and their opinions never make it into the pool, they end up quietly criticizing and passively resisting. Worse still, when others force their ideas into the pool, people have a harder time accepting the information.
For example, if Kevin and the other leaders had not been committed to their relocation decision, terrible consequences would have followed. Some people would have agreed to move; others would have dragged their feet. Some would have held heated discussions in the hallways. Others would have said nothing and then quietly fought the plan. Instead of engaging in healthy dialogue, we play silly and costly games. For instance, sometimes we move to silence. We play Salute and Stay Mute.
Or at home we may play Freeze Your Lover. Sometimes we rely on hints, sarcasm, caustic humor, innuendo, and looks of disgust to make our points. Afraid to confront an individual, we blame an entire team for a problem—hoping the message will hit the right target. Whatever the technique, the overall method is the same. We withhold meaning from the pool. We go to silence. On other occasions, not knowing how to stay in dialogue, we try to force our meaning into the pool.
We rely on violence—anything from subtle manipulation to verbal attacks. We act like we know everything, hoping people will believe our arguments. And then we use every manner of force to get our way or possibly even harm others. We borrow power from the boss; we hit people with biased monologues; we make hurtful comments. The goal, of course, is always the same—to compel others to our point of view. In order to move to our best, we have to find a way to explain what is in each of our personal pools of meaning—especially our high-stakes, sensitive, and controversial opinions, feelings, and ideas—and to get others to share their pools.
We have to develop the tools that make it safe for us to discuss these issues and to come to a shared pool of meaning.
And when we do, our lives change. The skills required to master high-stakes interactions are quite easy to spot and moderately easy to learn. First consider the fact that a well-handled crucial conversation all but leaps out at you. In fact, when you see someone enter the dangerous waters of a high-stakes, high-emotion, controversial discussion—and the person does a particularly good job—your natural reaction is to step back in awe.
What starts as a doomed discussion ends up with a healthy resolution. It can take your breath away. First, we followed around Kevin and others like him. Then, when conversations turned crucial, we took detailed notes. Afterward, we compared our observations, tested our hypotheses, and honed our models until we found the skills that consistently explain the success of brilliant communicators.
Finally, we combined our philosophies, theories, models, and skills into a package of learnable tools—tools for talking when stakes are high.
We then taught these skills and watched as key performance indicators and relationships improved. Stay with us as we explore how to transform crucial conversations from frightening events into interactions that yield success and results.
My Crucial Conversation: Bobby R. My crucial conversation began on the night before my first deployment to Iraq in There was a lot of tension between members of my family caused by past events and conflicting perspectives. The stress of my leaving to combat only increased the tension. On that night, one well-intended but deeply loaded question from my father sent me through the roof. The way I reacted over the next couple of hours started a downward spiral that affected my entire family.
Siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, children, and grandparents all took sides. My family ties continued to unravel as I led a platoon of soldiers through the streets of Baghdad. My wife was home with our one-year-old and pregnant with our second.
During my tour, additional family encounters only worsened the situation, and when I came home after fourteen months in combat, I came home to a family that was completely broken at every existing generation. The silence between me and my father continued for five years. Crucial Conversations saved my relationship with my parents. A neighbor who is a Crucial Conversations trainer invited me to his class before my third tour in Iraq.
A couple of weeks before I deployed I reached out to my father to let him know about the two children he had never seen and that I was leaving for combat. On a beautiful sunset balcony in Houston, my dad and I spent three tense hours dealing with a lot of pain and built-up resentment.
I kept in mind what I had been taught and, rather than compromising candor, tried my best to create the conditions where we could be both honest and respectful.
It was incredibly difficult. Sometimes the honesty threatened to put us right back in the angry state that got us there. But I kept focusing on what I really wanted—a relationship with my family. At the end of the conversation, we met my mom for dinner. She had been the most hurt by my anger in the past and was skeptical that I was still the argumentative, sarcastic, spiteful, and arrogant child of my youth. We have agreed to never bury our concerns in silence again.
I attribute the relationship I have today to the success of that one crucial conversation on the balcony. Had I not practiced what I had learned, my relationship with my father would have died from anger and indifference. That conversation happened because of a friend who introduced me to Crucial Conversations. The focus is on how we think about problem situations and what we do to prepare for them.
As we work on ourselves, watch for problems, examine our own thought processes, discover our own styles, and then catch problems before they get out of hand, everyone benefits. This is what most people have in mind when they think of crucial conversations. How do I express delicate feedback? How do I speak persuasively, not abrasively?
And how about listening? Or better still, what can we do to get people to talk when they seem nervous? And how do we move from thought to action? As you read on, you will learn the key skills of talking, listening, and acting together. Then, to see if you can really do what it takes, we provide seventeen situations that would give most of us fits—even people who are gifted at dialogue.
As you read on, you will master the tools for talking when stakes are high. How do you encourage the flow of meaning in the face of differing opinions and strong emotions? The truth is, people can change. But it requires work. In fact, this is the first principle of dialogue—Start with Heart. That is, your own heart. Two young sisters and their father scurry into their hotel room after spending a hot afternoon at Disneyland. Given the repressive heat, the girls have consumed enough soda pop to fill a small barrel.
As the two bursting kids enter their room, they have but one thought —to head for the head. Both of the desperate children start arguing, pushing, and name-calling as they dance around the tiny bathroom. Eventually one calls out to her father for help. You can stay in the bathroom and figure out who goes first and who goes second. No hitting. As the minutes slowly tick away, he hears nothing more than an occasional outburst of sarcasm. Finally after twenty-five long minutes, the toilet flushes.
One girl comes out. A minute later, another flush and out walks her sister. She always has to have her way! Then they behaved in ways that ensured the bathroom was little more than a distant dream. Our problem is not that our behavior degenerates. So the first step to achieving the results we really want is to fix the problem of believing that others are the source of all that ails us. As much as others may need to change, or we may want them to change, the only person we can continually inspire, prod, and shape—with any degree of success—is the person in the mirror.
People who believe they need to start with themselves do just that. As they work on themselves, they also become the most skilled at dialogue. As is often the case, the rich get richer. But how? Where do we start? How can we stay clear of unhealthy games? That is, they begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens.
They maintain this focus in two ways. Despite constant invitations to slip away from their goals, they stick with them. Unlike others who justify their unhealthy behavior by explaining that they had no choice but to fight or take flight, the dialogue-smart believe that dialogue, no matter the circumstances, is always an option. Greta, the CEO of a midsized corporation, is two hours into a rather tense meeting with her top leaders.
For the past six months, she has been on a personal campaign to reduce costs. Little has been accomplished to date, so Greta calls the meeting. After all, she has taken great pains to foster candor. Greta has just opened the meeting to questions when a manager haltingly rises to his feet, fidgets, stares at the floor, and then nervously asks if he can ask a very tough question.
The frightened manager continues. Everyone looks to see what will happen next. The manager plunges on ahead. Is that right? The conversation has just turned crucial. Someone has just poured a rather ugly tidbit into the pool of meaning. Will Greta continue to encourage honest feedback, or will she shut the fellow down? Does she walk the talk of openness and honesty? Or is she a raging hypocrite—like so many of the senior executives who came before her? As we watch Greta, something quite subtle and yet very important takes place.
It is lost on most of the people in the room—but with our front-row seat, it is practically palpable. She leans forward and grips the left side of the rostrum hard enough that her knuckles turn white.
She lifts her right hand, with the finger pointing at the questioner like a loaded weapon. Her motive has clearly changed from making the right choice to something far less noble.
Like most of us in similar circumstances, Greta is no longer focused on cost-cutting. Her attention is now turned to staff-cutting—beginning with one particular staff member. When under attack, our heart can take a similarly sudden and unconscious turn. When faced with pressure and strong opinions, we often stop worrying about the goal of adding to the pool of meaning and start looking for ways to win, punish, or keep the peace.
This particular dialogue killer sits at the top of many of our lists. Heaven only knows that we come by this deadly passion naturally enough. Half of the TV programs we watch make heroes out of people who win at sports or game shows.
That means we have to beat our fellow students at the same game. We start out with the goal of resolving a problem, but as soon as someone raises the red flag of inaccuracy or challenges our correctness, we switch purposes in a heartbeat. First, we correct the facts. If you doubt this simple allegation, think of the two antsy young girls as they stared each other down in the cramped bathroom. Their original goal was simple enough—relief. But soon, caught up in their own painful game, the two set their jaws and committed to doing whatever it took to win— even if it brought them a fair amount of personal discomfort.
Sometimes, as our anger increases, we move from wanting to win the point to wanting to harm the other person. Just ask Greta. We move so far away from adding meaning to the pool that now all we want is to see others suffer.
The silence is deafening. Keeping the peace. Sometimes we choose personal safety over dialogue. Rather than add to the pool of meaning, and possibly make waves along the way, we go to silence. We choose at least in our minds peace over conflict. Watch as Melanie approaches a performance review with a direct report.
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