The best way to minimize the number of crucial conversations you have in life is to have a meaningless life. As soon as you go after something important, the crucial conversations will occur.
In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, authors Joseph Grenny et al share strategies and tools for having tough conversations especially when the stakes are high and emotions are running high. The book provides a toolkit for mastering high-stakes conversations, no matter the topic or the person.
When the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run high, you have three choices: avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; mishandle the conversation and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies from crucial conversations and improve relationships and outcomes.
Book Theme
The root cause of many—if not most—human problems lies in how people behave when we disagree about high-stakes, emotional issues.
WHAT’S A CRUCIAL CONVERSATION?
They’re the daily conversations that reshape your life.
Crucial Conversation (krōō shel kän´vŭr sa´ shen) n
A discussion between two or more people in which they hold (1) opposing opinions about a (2) high-stakes issue and where (3) emotions run strong.
When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions start to run strong, casual conversations transform into crucial ones. Ironically, the more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to handle it well. When we fail a Crucial Conversation, every aspect of our lives can be affected— from our companies, to our careers, to our communities, to our relationships, to our personal health. And the longer the lag time, the more room for mischief.
Crucial Conversations are most successful when they’re focused on one issue. Because human interactions are inherently complex, focusing a Crucial Conversation on a single topic takes effort. It requires us to thoughtfully unbundle and then prioritize the issues at hand.
Lag Time Is a Factor
It’s one thing to have a boss who fails to keep her commitments. It’s another to have the problem fester into gossip, mistrust, and covert resentment as it echoes through hallways rather than being frankly addressed.
“The real damage happens during the lag time between people seeing her weaknesses and people addressing her weaknesses.”
What happens in the absence of candid dialogue? Contention. Resentment. Gamesmanship. Poor decisions. Spotty execution. Missed opportunities. At the heart of almost all chronic problems in relationships, teams, organizations, and even nations are Crucial Conversations people either don’t hold or don’t hold well. Decades of research have led us to conclude that:
You can measure the health of relationships, teams, and organizations by measuring the lag time between when problems are identified and when they are resolved.
When we face Crucial Conversations, we have three broad options:
• We can avoid them.
• We can face them and handle them poorly.
• We can face them and handle them well.
The “Fool’s Choice.”
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. Skilled communicators resist this false trade-off and look for ways to do both. They look for a way to be both 100 percent honest and 100 percent respectful at the same time. In short, they look for way to get to dialogue: a condition where meaning flows freely between parties resulting in a larger pool of information shared by all.
Dialogue
At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of 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.
di·a·logue or di·a·log (dì´ ∂-lôg´´, -lòg) n: The free flow of meaning between two or more people.
When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, we’re often at our worst. 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 thoughts and opinions—and to get others to share their pools.
Three Signs You’re Having the Wrong Conversation
1. Your emotions escalate.
When you’re having the wrong conversation, even if that conversation is going well, you know on some level that you’re not addressing or resolving the issue. Consequently, you come in feeling frustrated, and that feeling increases as the conversation progresses.
2. You walk away skeptical.
Sure, maybe you come to the end of the conversation with an agreement, but even as you walk away, you think to yourself, “Nothing is going to really change here.” Or you get to agreement but doubt that the changes you settled on will solve the real problem. Whatever agreement you came to is only so much window dressing because it won’t get you to what you really want.
3. You’re in a dèjá vu dialogue.
If you ever have the same conversation with the same people a second time, the problem is not them. It’s you. You’re having the wrong conversation. If even as you say the words they feel familiar because you’ve had this conversation before—maybe even a dozen times—you’re on the wrong topic.
The first time something happens, it’s an incident. The second time it might be coincidence. The third time, it’s a pattern.
Is Meaning Flowing
Crucial Conversations are, by definition, hard conversations. We and others have to stretch in these conversations, often venturing into new territory and feeling some degree of vulnerability. The measure of whether a conversation is safe is not how comfortable I feel.
It is whether meaning is flowing. Do I, and others, feel like we can share our meaning, have that meaning heard, and also listen honestly and respectfully to each other? If you can do that, if meaning is flowing honestly and respectfully, you know safety is there.
Silence and Violence
As people begin to feel unsafe, they start down one of two unhealthy paths. They move either to silence (withholding meaning from the pool) or to verbal violence (trying to force meaning in the pool).
Silence.
Silence consists of any act to purposely withhold information from the pool of meaning. It’s almost always done as a means of avoiding potential problems, and it always restricts the flow of meaning. Methods range from playing verbal games to avoiding a person entirely. The three most common forms of silence are masking, avoiding, and withdrawing.
Violence
Violence consists of any verbal strategy that attempts to convince or control others or compel them to your point of view. It violates safety by trying to force meaning into the pool. Methods range from name-calling and monologuing to making threats. The three most common forms are controlling, labeling, and attacking.
Look for Your Style Under Stress
The truth is, we all have trouble monitoring our own behavior at times. We usually lose any semblance of social sensitivity when we become so consumed with ideas and causes that we lose track of what we’re doing. We try to bully our way through. We speak when we shouldn’t. We withdraw into a punishing silence.
MAKE IT SAFE: How to Make It Safe to Talk About Almost Anything
Intent not Content
You first need to understand why someone feels unsafe. People never become defensive about what you’re saying (the content of your message). They become defensive because of why they think you’re saying it (the intent). Said another way, safety in a conversation is about intent, not content. When people become defensive, it is because either:
1. You have a bad intent toward them (and they are accurately picking up on that). Or:
2. They have misunderstood your good intent.
“If people trust your intent, they feel safer dealing with touchy content.”
TWO CONDITIONS OF SAFETY
In order for people to feel safe with you, they need to know two things about your intent. They need to know that:
• You care about their concerns (Mutual Purpose).
• You care about them (Mutual Respect).
When safety is at risk, step out of the content and strengthen mutual purpose and mutual respect
Mutual Purpose—the Entrance Condition
Mutual Purpose means that others perceive that you’re working toward a common outcome in the conversation, that you care about their goals, interests, and values. And vice versa. You believe they care about yours. Consequently, Mutual Purpose is the entry condition of dialogue. Find a shared goal, and you have both a good reason and a healthy climate for talking.
You don’t have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend. If people feel safe, you can speak the truth, they may not like it, they may not enjoy it, it may cause pain and suffering but at least they’ll be able to hear it.
Mutual Respect—the Continuance Condition
Mutual Respect is the continuance condition of dialogue. As people perceive that others don’t respect them, the conversation immediately becomes unsafe, and dialogue comes to a screeching halt.
Candor Is Never the Problem: People never become defensive about what you’re saying. People become defensive because of why they think you are saying it.
Here are four skills that the best at dialogue routinely use to build safety up front in a conversation and rebuild safety when it’s been lost:
•Share your good intent.
•Apologize when appropriate.
•Contrast to fix misunderstandings.
•Create a Mutual Purpose.
STATE
Once you’ve worked on yourself to create the right conditions for dialogue, you can then draw upon five distinct skills that can help you talk about even the most sensitive topics. These five tools can be easily remembered with the acronym STATE. It stands for:
• Share your facts. Start with the least controversial, most persuasive elements from your Path to Action.
• Tell your story. Explain what you’re beginning to conclude.
• Ask for others’ paths. Encourage others to share both their facts and their stories.
• Talk tentatively. State your story as a story—don’t disguise it as a fact.
• Encourage testing. Make it safe for others to express differing or even opposing views.
EXPLORE OTHERS’ PATHS
To encourage the free flow of meaning and help others leave silence or violence behind, explore their Path to Action. Start with an attitude of curiosity and patience. This helps restore safety.
Then use four powerful listening skills to retrace the other person’s Path to Action to its origins:
• Ask. Start by simply expressing interest in the other person’s views.
• Mirror. Increase safety by respectfully acknowledging the emotions people appear to be feeling.
• Paraphrase. As others begin to share part of their story, restate what you’ve heard to show not just that you understand, but also that it’s safe for others to share what they’re thinking.
• Prime. If others continue to hold back, prime. Take your best guess at what they may be thinking and feeling.
As you begin to respond, remember:
• Agree. Agree when you share views.
• Build. If others leave something out, agree where you share views; then build.
• Compare. When you do differ significantly, don’t suggest others are wrong. Compare your two views.
RETAKE YOUR PEN
When you find yourself reacting to hard feedback, remind yourself that your reaction is largely within your control. “Retake your pen” by taking steps to secure your safety and affirm your worth. Then use four skills to manage how you address the information others share:
- Collect yourself. Breathe deeply, name your emotions, and present yourself with soothing truths that establish your safety and worth.
- Understand. Be curious. Ask questions and ask for examples. And then just listen. Detach yourself from what is being “said as though it is being said about a third person.
- Recover. Take a time-out if needed to recover emotionally and process what you’ve heard.
- Engage. Examine what you were told. Look for truth rather than defensively poking holes in the feedback. If appropriate, reengage with the person who shared the feedback and acknowledge what you heard, what you accept, and what you commit to do. If needed, share your view of things in a noncombative way.
Learn to Look.
The first principle for positive change is Learn to Look. That is, people who improve their dialogue skills continually ask themselves whether they’re in or out of dialogue. This alone makes a huge difference.
Are we playing games, or are we in dialogue?
Make It Safe.
When you notice that you and others have moved away from dialogue, do something to make it safer. Sometimes you’ll build safety by asking a question and showing interest in others’ views. Sometimes an appropriate touch (with loved ones and family members—not at work where touching can equate with harassment) can communicate safety. Apologies, smiles, even a request for a brief “time-out” can help restore safety when things get dicey.
The main idea is to Make It Safe. Do something to generate evidence that you care about others’ interests and that you respect them.
Crucial moments—moments when people’s actions disproportionately affect their organizations, their relationships, and their lives.
Crucial Conversations – What stands between us and what we really want is lag time. The problem isn’t that we have problems. The problem is the lag time between when we know we have them and when we find a way to effectively confront, discuss, and resolve them. If you reduce this lag time, everything gets better.
All the Best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.
