SUMMARY:
isandrews.com
Crucial Conversations
KERRY PATTERSON, JOSEPH GRENNY, RON MCMILLAN & AL SWITZLER
by Is Andrews
“Speak when you are angry, and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.” Dr Laurence J. Peter, educator and systems analyst
Crucial conversations happen to everyone - they are the conversations that affect the quality of our lives, in both the personal and the professional realm. Crucial conversations are those in which opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions are strong. They are conversations about tough issues, areas people normally shy away from talking about. They might centre around finance, family ties, work commitments, friendships, or how you spend your leisure time. Take a moment to think of the things that matter to you… what happens if your wife or husband doesn’t value those things in the same way? Or consider an important decision you need to make together – how will you go about making sure you both are able to fully express your opinions, and yet still come to strong agreement on the outcome? Unless we can master having crucial conversations with our partners, we’ll spend our marriages either avoiding tricky topics, or facing confrontation but doing it badly! Often when it matters most to talk something through, we tend to be on our ‘worst behaviour’. We panic, we struggle to marshal our thoughts together and discuss things clearly, and often emotive language and self-defeating patterns of withdrawal or aggression lead us into arguments or stalemates. Crucial conversations involve successful dialogue: the free flow of information between people. People who know how to get all sides of an issue out into the open can make it ‘safe’ for everyone participating in the conversation to add their thoughts, ideas and opinions to the shared pool of knowledge and information. The authors of Crucial Conversations identify seven basic principles of successful dialogue, which we’ll explore in brief.
Step 1: Start with the Heart Stay focused on what you really want. Check the motives behind what you’re saying: do you just want to ‘win’? Are you embarrassed, talked into a corner, and don’t feel you can back down? Are you trying to second-guess your partner’s hidden needs or desires? Ask: • • •
What do I really want for myself? What do I really want for others? What do I really want for the relationship?
Step 2: Learn to Look Here, the key is being able to notice both the content of your conversations and the conditions – that is what someone is saying, and how they are saying it. • •
Watch out for physical, emotional or behavioural cues that the conversation is a crucial one (such as a dry mouth or racing heart; feeling hurt, angry or panicked; people become louder or much quieter). Recognise silence and violence: when people feel unsafe in a conversation, they will often either withdraw or avoid further interaction (by going quiet and passive, or even physically exiting the scene), or seek to take control by using aggressive, attacking behaviours (for example “that’s just a typically female response”, “I don’t
Page 1