In Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High, authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler argue that many problems are caused by how people behave when they disagree with others about high-stakes, emotional issues. Organizational performance and the quality of relationships improve significantly when people learn the skills to handle these crucial conversations effectively.
A crucial conversation is a discussion characterized by high stakes, differing opinions, and strong emotions. Crucial conversations are often typical daily interactions as opposed to planned, high-level meetings. These conversations can have a huge impact on your life. Examples include: ending a relationship, asking a roommate to move out, resolving an issue with an ex-spouse, confronting a coworker about his/her behavior, or giving the boss critical feedback.
We often try to avoid having these conversations because we’re afraid we’ll make matters worse. And in fact, when we do have crucial conversations, we usually handle them badly. We behave our worst at the most critical moments. We may withdraw, or rage and say things we later regret.
We typically fail at these conversations because:
But this doesn’t have to happen. People can learn the skills to handle these conversations effectively. And when they do, their career, health, personal relationships, and their organization or company benefit tremendously.
For crucial conversations to be constructive, they must have a shared purpose and the conditions must be safe for everyone to contribute. It’s important that all parties participate in order to reach the best conclusion or outcome. Many conversations, however, go off the rails as people act out by pushing their views aggressively, withholding their views, or acting from motives that undercut the shared purpose.
Specifically, there are seven key dialogue principles, including implementation skills you can learn.
In high-risk discussions, stay focused on what you really want (your big-picture goal, such as a stronger relationship), so you don’t sidetracked by conversational games, such as trying to win, punish the other person, or keep the peace.
Also, refuse the fool’s choice of limiting yourself to an either/or alternative (I can stay silent and keep the peace, or I can speak up and ruin my relationship). Look for ways to do both: speak up and have a stronger relationship.
The first prerequisite for healthy dialogue is safety. You can’t have constructive dialogue when people don’t feel safe, because they start acting in unproductive ways and stop contributing to the dialogue. To maintain safety in a conversation, you must monitor two elements: what’s being discussed and what people are doing in response — both the content and the conditions of the conversation.
To ensure safe conditions for conversation:
For people to feel safe in speaking their minds, there are two requirements: 1) a mutual purpose for the conversation (agreement on what we’re trying to accomplish); and 2) mutual respect — each participant’s views and feelings are respected.
When someone doesn’t feel safe in saying something potentially controversial, either they don’t trust in a mutual purpose (they’re suspicious of ulterior motives), or someone has undermined mutual respect (for instance, by attacking another person, sighing, or eye-rolling). The dialogue can’t resume until respect has been restored.
You need to clarify or rebuild mutual purpose if your motives and goals, or someone else’s, seem to be suspect. Use CRIB skills:
When you need to repair a misunderstanding to restore respect, you can use the skill of contrasting. Contrasting is a don’t/do statement that:
An example of contrasting in a couple’s conversation: “I don’t want to suggest that this problem is yours. I think it’s ours. I don’t want to put the burden on you. What I do want is to be able to talk so we understand each other better.”
Our emotions are generated by “stories” we tell ourselves when someone does or says something. These stories are our interpretations of what we saw and/or heard. Negative interpretations lead to negative feelings and then to unproductive actions.
But we can change our emotions by rethinking our stories, or retracing our path from our feelings and actions back to the incident that prompted them: notice your behavior, identify your feelings, analyze the story creating your feelings, and go back to facts (ask yourself, what evidence you have to support your story, and whether the facts might support a different story or conclusion). Also, make sure you’re telling yourself the full story, and haven’t omitted any facts to justify your reaction.
Express your views (tell your story) in such a way that others will be receptive, encourage feedback, and be willing to alter your views or story when additional facts warrant. When caught up in unproductive emotions and actions, retrace them to the facts to test their accuracy.
This process can be broken down as follows, remembering the acronym STATE:
To have a constructive conversation, you need to encourage, listen to, and understand others’ views. Start with an attitude of curiosity and patience. Use four listening skills to trace the other person’s path to action (AMPP).
As you begin to share your views, remember ABC:
Once everyone contributes his or her information to a crucial conversation, the final step is action. All the conversational effort is moot unless there’s an action plan and follow-through to achieve results.
Groups often fail to convert the ideas into action and results for two reasons:
To move from ideas to action, first choose the decision-making method:
Additional steps are:
When you’re involved in a heated crucial conversation, it can be hard to remember and apply the dialogue skills and principles. It takes practice and preparation. In the meantime, however, your can improve your handling of crucial conversations by simply focusing on two key principles:
Meanwhile, study and practice the seven dialogue principles. Despite the challenges and risks of crucial conversations, anyone can learn the skills to effectively hold tough conversations about virtually any topic. Don’t worry about being perfect — even a little effort can lead to dramatic improvement.
The authors of Crucial Conversations argue that:
So what are crucial conversations? They’re not limited to important people talking about high-level things. They’re typical interactions you have every day — which can have a huge impact on your life.
A crucial conversation is a discussion characterized by high stakes, differing opinions, and strong emotions.
Here’s an example of each of the criteria:
There are many crucial conversation topics that, if mishandled, can lead to disastrous results in your personal life or at work. They include:
Despite the importance of crucial conversations, we often avoid them because we’re afraid we’ll make matters worse. If total avoidance isn’t possible, we may send emails or leave messages instead of talking face-to-face.
When we do have crucial conversations, we handle them badly. We behave our worst at the most critical moments. We yell, withdraw, or say things we later regret. This happens because:
Relationships, careers, organizations, and communities are built on the ability to talk about high-stakes, difficult topics. Therefore, mishandled conversations have a huge impact. In fact, they’re at the root of a majority of persistent problems in organizations, teams, and relationships.
Despite the challenges and risks, anyone can learn to effectively hold tough conversations about virtually any topic.
Learning to master crucial conversations can:
When you can address difficult topics effectively, you’ll be influential and effective at getting things done, and you’ll build strong relationships.
For example, you’ll be able to stand up to the boss without committing career suicide, or debate controversial issues without going overboard and creating enemies. You don’t have to choose between honesty and your career. You can get people at all levels to listen without getting angry or defensive.
Having leaders and employees who skillfully handle crucial conversations can improve an organization’s performance, while poorly handled conversations and interactions can undercut it.
On the positive side, the authors’ research shows that companies whose employees are skilled at crucial conversations:
Most leaders think that organizational productivity and performance are driven by policies, processes, or systems. When there are problems they adjust these things, but it often doesn’t work because the problem is behavior, not systems.
Solving behavior problems requires crucial conversation skills.
On the negative side, when organizations have performance problems such as snowballing costs, late delivery times, and poor morale, the biggest reason is employees’ unwillingness or inability to speak up (have crucial conversations) at key moments.
For example, employees see others take shortcuts or make mistakes, and don’t say anything, which impacts safety, turnover, and productivity. Also projects can fail when employees stay silent about problems — for instance, when goals are unrealistic, team members perform badly, or leadership stumbles.
Failed crucial conversations can cause relationships to fail.
When people break up they often blame it on differences of opinion on important issues. But while everyone argues about important issues, clearly not every relationship ends in turmoil — it’s how you argue that matters.
From the authors’ research observing couples, they found that people handle difficult conversations in one of three ways:
The researchers found that helping couples hold crucial conversations more effectively reduced their chances for unhappiness or breakup by more than half.
The ability to master high-stakes crucial conversations contributes to a healthier and longer life.
On the other hand, communication problems can exacerbate health problems:
A crucial conversation is a discussion characterized by high stakes, differing opinions, and strong emotions. Your skill in handling these conversations directly affects your success at work and in your personal relationships.
Think of a crucial conversation at work that you’re avoiding or not handling well. How could handling it successfully boost your career?
Think of a recent crucial conversation in your relationship. How would you grade yourself on the way you handled it? How would improving your dialogue skills benefit your relationship?
Are certain conversations that haven’t gone well bothering you? Which ones would strengthen your health and well-being if you handled them better?
Many people make the mistake in crucial conversations of believing they have to make unpalatable either/or choices, for instance, 1) choose between telling the truth about a problem vs. 2) staying silent to preserve a relationship with a boss, coworker, or loved one.
Believing you have only two problematic alternatives to choose from is a fool’s choice. There are always more alternatives.
We’ve all made the fool’s choice to not say anything about issues with bosses, family, and friends. The consequences can be unfortunate: In the workplace, it can lead to terrible decisions; in personal relationships, it can create misery when partners are afraid to speak up.
Here’s an example of how employee silence can affect a company. The leaders of a company are planning to move its headquarters for flawed reasons. If the employees make a fool’s choice and fail to point out potential downsides for fear of retribution, company leaders will make a decision with harmful future consequences and waste money.
But there’s another option: A manager can speak up honestly and also preserve the relationship by using dialogue skills to be persuasive and respectful. If she succeeds the leadership may listen and revise the moving plans.
The key to successful conversations is getting all relevant information on the table.
When people express their opinions honestly, share their feelings, and articulate ideas — even if their ideas are controversial or unpopular — the result is dialogue, the free exchange of meaning or information.
Each of us brings to conversations our own feelings, ideas, and experiences. This information constitutes our personal pool of meaning, which drives our actions.
When people engage in a crucial conversation, they add their unique information to a shared pool of meaning. It’s important that all opinions be reflected in the shared pool so the best quality decisions can be made. Everyone should feel comfortable contributing their information — even if it’s unpopular or controversial.
As people contribute, the shared pool of meaning expands to encompass more useful and more accurate information, and collectively they make better decisions. Another way to look at it is, pool of information reflects the group’s IQ — the higher the IQ, the better the decisions.
A quality decision is the payoff for the time invested in sharing and discussion.
When People Hold Back
When people withhold what they know either intentionally or because they don’t know how to present it, the shared pool of information is shallow. This results in several problems:
When People Share Freely
When people freely add to the shared pool of meaning:
For successful crucial conversations, we must:
Fortunately, dialogue skills are learnable. When you develop the skills to master crucial conversations you can transform them from upsetting events to productive discussions.
The rest of the book explains how you can create conditions conducive to dialogue. You’ll learn to:
Learning dialogue skills starts with diligent self-examination because if you don’t understand yourself, you can’t be fully effective at dialogue.
In crucial conversations, you’ll revert to tactics you grew up with (debate, silent treatment, manipulation, etc.). You need to understand your tendencies in order to counteract them and learn new skills.
You also need to be able to see how you’re contributing to the problems you’re experiencing. In disagreements, it’s human nature to focus on what you think someone else is doing wrong. But when you focus on blaming or finding fault, you lose track of what you really want, to your detriment.
For example, two children who get into a fight over who should be first to use the bathroom forgot their objective (using the bathroom) when they became focused on winning the argument. As a result, they prolonged their misery.
It’s important to begin high-risk discussions with the heart (with the right motives) and stay focused no matter what happens.
You do this by making two heart-based assumptions:
Example: Greta the CEO
Here’s an example of how switching your motives unconsciously due to emotion can affect your ability to stay in productive conversation.
Greta, a corporate CEO, has been trying for months to get her top managers to cut costs, but they’ve been dragging their feet. During a crucial conversation on the problem, a manager explains frankly why progress hasn’t been made: Greta herself is the roadblock.
The manager explains that while Greta says she wants her team to cut expenses, everyone knows that she’s spending money building and decorating a new office for herself, which comes across as hypocritical. Greta responds to the manager’s honesty by tensing up, looking as if she is under attack, and starting to point a finger. Her motive has changed: She is no longer focused on cost-cutting but on reasserting her authority or worse.
When you come under pressure in a discussion, if you’re not alert to your emotions, you may forget your original purpose (understanding and solving a problem by creating a shared pool of information) and switch to winning, punishing, or keeping the peace.
Here’s how to stay focused on your original goals/motives for the conversation, and avoid getting sidetracked by a desire to win or by some other motive: Focus on what you really want, and refuse the fool’s choice.
Stopping and asking yourself a question can redirect your thinking when heat starts to build — for instance when someone strongly disagrees with you. Stop and remind yourself of what you really want. Then ask whether you’re starting to change your goal to something else. What you’re feeling and doing are clues. Under the influence of adrenaline your motives change without conscious thought.
Once you zero in on your shifting motives you can choose to change them. Remind yourself of your original purpose (what you want from the conversation for yourself and others), then consider how you should behave to achieve your purpose. Ask yourself, “how should I behave, if I actually wanted my results?”
Taking the wrong path can be tempting. You may try to pick a fight, or succumb to your ingrained desire to win. Again, remind yourself of what you’re trying to accomplish in the conversation, and stay on track.
Under pressure, your body reacts. If you catch this happening, you can switch your brain from a fight or flight response to problem-solving mode. When posed a demanding question, your body sends blood to the brain to help you think and away from the parts of the body that prep for fight or flight.
Asking questions about what you want reminds you of your goal and resets your brain in a way that helps keep you focused on dialogue.
Example: Greta the CEO (cont’d)
In the preceding example of the uncomfortable managers’ meeting, here’s what happened. Greta dodged the bullet by stopping her initial anger and remembering what she really wanted from the conversation: Her goal was to encourage the managers to embrace the cost-reduction efforts.
When she realized that the barrier was the staff’s belief that she was a hypocrite, she went from feeling angry to being grateful that by speaking up her manager had given her the opportunity to address the problem. Instead of expressing anger, she expressed openness and interest.
She explained that her new office was part of a marketing effort to create a different image.
However, she admitted that she hadn’t paid enough attention to the cost. A candid conversation followed and they agreed to move ahead with the building project, but to cut costs in half.
Because Greta remained focused on her motive instead of being derailed by anger, she got the results (cost reductions) she was seeking.
Often when our adrenaline starts pumping, our brain function stalls and we feel forced to choose between only two bad alternatives. But this either/or belief gets us sidetracked and can kill dialogue.
For example, when a group of teachers met to discuss curriculum changes, one of them — an older, experienced teacher — digressed from the topic and rambled to the point that a younger teacher became frustrated and interrupted him rudely and offensively. The younger teacher made a fool’s choice — he was disrespectful because he thought his only choices were rudeness or not speaking up, thus allowing the unproductive conversation to continue.
But instead of focusing on only those two options, the young teacher should have set aside his emotions and asked himself what he wanted for himself and the relationship. He could have maintained his relationship with his older colleague, while also speaking up in a respectful way — helping the older man to clarify and focus his points, to add his meaning to the shared pool.
When you refuse the fool’s choice at an emotional time, and return to the question of what you really want, your brain responds with better options. You can share your concerns, listen to others’ concerns, and build your relationship at the same time.
You can refuse fool’s choices by coming up with new choices. You do this by going through a thought process that moves you from either/or to and. Here’s how it works.
The first prerequisite for healthy dialogue is safety. You can’t have constructive dialogue when people don’t feel safe, because they start acting in unproductive ways and stop contributing their information to the shared pool.
To maintain safety in a conversation, you must consider two elements: what is being discussed and what’s happening in response — both the content and the conditions of the conversation.
Most people focus on the content, but the conditions are equally important.
Nonetheless, it’s easy to get caught up in the content and care so much about the subject that you don’t notice what’s happening to the dialogue, which can quickly become unproductive. For instance, you or someone else may be speaking too forcefully; others may feel threatened and shut down, or become increasingly forceful themselves.
You need to monitor both content (the topic) and conditions (what people are doing in response) simultaneously. Look at what and why: People are getting upset. Why is this happening?
The rest of this chapter focuses on how to monitor and maintain safe conditions for conversation, while Chapter 5 focuses on making the content safe (discussing difficult topics safely).
The steps for keeping conditions safe are:
Stay alert for the moment a conversation turns from harmless to crucial so you can avoid getting sidetracked by emotions and can intervene if others go off track. Reprogram your mind to pay attention to signs — physical, emotional, and behavioral — that suggest you’re in a crucial conversation.
Once you see that a conversation is starting to turn crucial, pay attention to safety: Watch for signs people are becoming fearful. When this happens they take a fight or flight response:
When people begin to feel unsafe, they may push, insult, be sarcastic, or make fun of you. While you should be thinking about how to make them feel safer, it’s difficult when you feel under attack — you may get emotional and respond in kind (or withdraw). At this point, you’re not dual-processing but becoming part of the problem as you get pulled into the fight.
When your emotions start ratcheting up, your key brain functions start shutting down. Your peripheral vision actually narrows — when you feel genuinely threatened you can’t see much beyond what’s right in front of you.
By pulling yourself out of the content of an argument and looking at conditions objectively, you reengage your brain and your vision returns. When you give your brain a new problem, it functions better.
Reinterpret others’ aggression as a sign they don’t feel safe — be curious, rather than angry or fearful — and take steps to change the conditions of the conversation.
When people resort to silence or violence — either withholding meaning or trying to force it on the shared pool — there are some common behaviors and tactics to look for.
Silence
Silence is any act to purposely withhold information from the pool of meaning. People usually go silent to avoid problems.
Behaviors include playing verbal games or avoiding a person entirely. But the most common forms of silence are masking, avoiding, and withdrawing.
Violence
Violence is a verbal strategy to convince or compel others to accept your point of view. Trying to force meaning into the pool violates safety. Behaviors include name-calling, filibustering, and making threats, but the most common are controlling, labeling, and attacking.
The most difficult thing to watch for as you’re dual-processing is your own behavior. Paying attention to your behavior takes a back seat — it’s hard to pull away from the lure of an argument, plus you have to be alert to others’ tactics.
However, you need to become a vigilant self-monitor — pay close attention to what you’re doing and the impact it’s having, then alter your strategy if necessary. Watch specifically to see whether you’re having a good or bad impact on safety. (Many people toggle between holding back and being too forceful).
To increase your self-awareness, think about what you do when conversations become difficult. When you understand your style under stress, you can find ways to improve your effectiveness in crucial conversations.
Your Stress Test
Here’s a quiz to see how you respond under pressure (using defensive tactics or dialogue skills). To answer the questions, pick a relationship (at work or home), and consider each statement in that context. Then consider which of the following behaviors/tactics you’re most inclined to use:
Withdrawing
Masking (understating or selectively showing your true opinions using sarcasm, sugarcoating, and couching)
Avoiding (steering away from sensitive topics)
Controlling: (hyperbole, absolutes, changing subjects, directive questions)
Labeling (attaching a label in order to stereotype or dismiss someone or their idea)
Attacking (making the other person suffer)
Ensuring safety
Exploring others’ paths
Controlling your emotions
You can get so involved in the content of an intense conversation that you lose track of what you’re doing and how others are reacting (your brain disengages and your emotions predominate). For conversations to be successful you need to pay attention to both the content and the conditions, so you can adjust if a dialogue goes off track.
Think about some of your toughest conversations. What were the cues (physical, emotional, behavioral) that your brain was beginning to disengage, and your emotions were driving you away from dialogue?
How can you respond to those cues in the future to stay in constructive conversation?
What is your style under stress? When conversations become heated, do you typically respond with silence (withdrawing) or violence (becoming verbally aggressive)? Give an example of a recent crucial conversation where you behaved that way.
Taking cues from the chapter, what could you do differently under stress?
We’ve all been part of conversations in which we didn’t feel safe to say what was on our mind. This chapter explains what to do to fix that. The basic steps in brief are:
Here’s a look at each step in detail.
The best approach when you don’t feel comfortable speaking your mind, is to step away from the content of the conversation until you can enhance safety.
Example: A Couple’s Argument
A couple, Yvonne and Jotham, have a conflict over intimacy — Jotham wants to have sex more often than Yvonne does. If Yvonne declines his invitation, Jotham goes silent and sulks (then she wants intimacy even less). If she goes along with it when she doesn’t want to, she feels resentful. Things keep escalating
Yvonne attempts to discuss the problem, but Jotham immediately resorts to silence or sarcasm (an indication that he feels unsafe in speaking his mind): “I don’t think I’m in the mood.” Yvonne comes back with: “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jotham gets angry, and Yvonne walks away because she doesn’t feel safe expressing her thoughts.
By stepping out of the conversation, she can take time to figure out why it’s unsafe and how to create conditions where they can both speak their minds.
The first step to building safety is understanding which of two requirements — mutual purpose or mutual respect — is at risk. Each requires a different solution.
Mutual Purpose: The Prerequisite for Dialogue
To have a successful crucial conversation, the participants must agree on a mutual purpose for having the conversation in the first place. Members believe everyone is working toward a common outcome and cares about others’ goals and interests.
Mutual purpose is the first requirement of dialogue. When you have a shared goal, everyone is motivated to participate, and there’s a positive atmosphere for talking.
Crucial conversations can go wrong when others don’t believe you’re contributing to a common goal, but instead have a hidden agenda (for instance, winning or punishing). Everything you say is suspect, even if you put it mildly. The problem isn’t the content of the conversation, it’s distrust of your motives. Signs that mutual purpose is in doubt include arguing, aggressiveness, and defensiveness.
To assess mutual purpose, ask yourself whether others believe you care about their goals and whether they trust your motives. In crucial conversations you must genuinely care about the interests of others. If your goal is to get your way or manipulate, others will quickly realize it.
Example: A Couple’s Argument (cont’d)
In the preceding example, if Jotham thinks Yvonne’s motive is to make him feel guilty or get her way, he won’t participate. But if she convinces him that she really cares about making things better for both of them, they have a mutual purpose and can talk.
Before you start,
Mutual Respect: The Requirement for Continuing Dialogue
Starting a conversation based on mutual purpose is the first step to addressing a crucial issue. But the conversation can’t continue if you don’t maintain mutual respect (others’ views and feelings are treated as equally worthy of consideration).
If people start feeling disrespected, the dialogue stops. Respect is like air – while you have it nobody thinks about it, but when it’s gone, people can think about nothing else. The conversation shifts from its original purpose to one of defending dignity.
Besides your words, behaviors such as shaking your head, sighing, or rolling your eyes can convey disrespect and shut down a conversation. Emotions are the key indication that people are defending their dignity. To assess mutual respect, ask yourself whether others feel you respect them.
It can be difficult to respect (or share a purpose) with people whose values and morals differ completely from yours, or with someone who is self-centered or has dubious motives.
But you don’t have to share every objective or respect every aspect of another person’s character before you can talk. Try this:
When you do these things, you can feel a connection or mutuality and you can talk with the most difficult people.
Example: Exchanging Ideas
After a bitter strike, things were tense at a manufacturing company when union members returned to work. As an exercise to change the atmosphere, managers and employees each met in separate rooms to discuss what they wanted for the company’s future. They taped a list of their ideas to the wall, then the groups exchanged rooms and could see the other group’s list. Each group was surprised to see how many goals they shared with the other side (profitability, quality products, stable jobs) and they were able to work more productively.
Once you step away from the content of a conversation, there are three skills you can use to restore either mutual purpose or mutual respect: apologize, contrast, create a mutual purpose.
Apologize If Warranted
When your behavior has made others doubt your respect or commitment to the shared purpose, offer a sincere apology. If you made a mistake that hurt others, express your regret. To be sincere, your motives have to change: You have to give up saving face, being right, or winning in order to focus on what you really want. When you sacrifice your ego, you’ll get something more important — productive dialogue.
If your apology has helped restore safety, you can then explain what happened, then return to the original issue. If it hasn’t, you’ll have to draw on other dialogue skills (more on that in a moment).
Example: Apology
A company’s employees worked extra hours on a presentation for a visiting vice president. But when the VP arrived, the employees’ manager monopolized the visit without introducing her to them.
After the visit, employees reacted angrily. Before anything else could be accomplished, the manager needed to apologize for causing hurt and disrespect, by not sharing the change in plans. Then he could explain what happened: the VP had presented a plan detrimental to the company and its employees, and the manager had spent the visit persuading her to revamp it.
Use Contrasting to Repair Misunderstanding
Sometimes when you’re sharing your views in crucial conversations, others believe unjustifiably that you’re out to harm or coerce them. You shouldn’t apologize because you haven’t done anything wrong - this would be disingenuous. To rebuild mutual purpose/mutual respect when others misinterpret your purpose or intent, you can use the skill of contrasting.
Contrasting is a two-part don’t/do statement that assures others that you respect them and clarifies your purpose. You explain what you don’t want, followed by what you do want.
Contrasting works this way (using the example of the manager explaining the VP visit to employees):
Of the two parts of contrasting, the don’t is more important because it deals with the misunderstanding that has undermined safety. You address the misunderstanding first, then explain what you intended.
In the Yvonne/Jotham conversation earlier, Yvonne could use contrasting when she returns to the conversation on intimacy: “I don’t want to put this all on you — it’s on both of us. What I do want is to be able to talk about it so we can improve things for both of us.”
Contrasting isn’t apologizing — it provides context and proportion. Sometimes when others take your words the wrong way, you’re tempted to water down what you’re trying to say. Don’t backpedal, but put your words in context: “Let me put this in perspective…I don’t mean to imply...”
You can use contrasting preemptively as well, to enhance safety when what you’re about to say could spark defensiveness: “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate…but”
Practical tip: When people take something the wrong way and you start arguing over the misunderstanding, stop and use contrasting. Explain what you don’t mean until it’s safe to return to the conversation.
Create a Mutual Purpose
Sometimes you end up in a debate because purposes differ. You could ignore the problem and push ahead, give up and let others have their way, or strike a messy compromise. However, the best approach is to back up and create a shared purpose by using four skills with the acronym CRIB: Commit, Recognize, Invent, Brainstorm.
Commit to seeking a mutual purpose. Commit to staying in conversation until the parties come up with a purpose everyone shares. Give up your belief that your choice is the best — there may be a different choice that suits everyone. Verbalize your commitment to finding a shared purpose, even if someone else seems committed to winning. Your commitment builds safety so others can feel more confident and participate.
Recognize the purpose behind the strategy: When you’re asking for something and the other person is asking for something else, you’re focused on strategy rather than what you really want. Refocusing on what you really want can help create a mutual purpose.
For example, one person wants to stay at home and the other wants to go out. These are strategies to achieve something else (a purpose that each person has). The two purposes are: to spend time together away from the kids; and to have some peace and quiet rather than running around. Their mutual purpose could be: Find something to do that is quiet and away from kids. With a mutual purpose, it will be easier to agree on a strategy.
You can break an impasse by asking, “Why do you want to do that?” Before you can agree on a mutual purpose, you need to know what people’s real purposes are. Step away from the content of the conversation, which is typically focused on strategies, and explore the purposes behind them.
When you separate strategies from purpose, new options become possible. When you focus on your real purpose you’re open to the idea of finding alternative strategies to serve everyone’s interests.
Invent a mutual purpose: If your goals and interests are completely at odds, you have to invent a mutual purpose. You do this by moving to more encompassing goals. For example, you and your spouse may disagree on whether you should take a promotion that requires moving to a new city. But you can agree on a larger goal: the needs of your relationship and family come before career interests. By focusing on bigger, longer-term goals, you can find ways to transcend short-term compromises that no one likes.
Brainstorm new strategies: After finding shared purpose, return to dialogue and brainstorm strategies that address everyone’s needs. You’ll no longer get bogged down in conflict because you’ve committed to finding something everyone can support. And you’re free to think outside the box.
More tips for creating safety:
Sometimes we end up in a debate because we have different purposes or goals. The best approach is to stop debating, back up, and create a mutual purpose. (The CRIB steps — Commit, Recognize, Invent, Brainstorm — may help.)
Think of a crucial conversation that you need to have in your relationship. Do you have a mutual purpose - do you agree on what you want to see happen? If so, what is it?
If you’re at odds on a purpose, consider what you and your partner each want. (For instance, if you disagree about how to manage your bank account, what do you each want in the short term? Maybe you want to go out and have fun to relieve stress, but your partner wants to curb spending to ensure there’s always enough money to pay bills and handle emergencies.)
Next, consider something you can agree on that you both really want long-term. (For instance, maybe you both want to avoid the stress and limitations of having bad credit.)
What strategy will enable you to achieve this mutual purpose and get what you each want in the short term? (For instance, agreeing on a monthly entertainment budget so you can have fun but also not exceed your bank account.)
When someone in a crucial conversation mistrusts your motives, you can use the technique of contrasting to help reassure them and get the dialogue back on track. You do it by first stating what you don’t want or intend, followed by what you do want.
Think of a touchy conversation you’re reluctant to have because you’re concerned the other person will get the wrong impression. Write a contrasting statement that you could use to reassure the person.
By learning to control your emotions, you’ll be in a better position to use the tools discussed so far (dual processing, contrasting, creating mutual purpose, etc.) to have successful crucial conversations.
Getting a better understanding of how emotions work is the first step. When we lose our cool we tend to blame others for pushing our buttons or making us mad. But we’re the drivers of our emotions, which in turn drive our actions.
Emotions don’t just happen. Here are two truths about them:
Here’s an example of how emotions can lead to unproductive behavior. Maria is a copywriter who worked with her boss, Louis, on a project, which they were supposed to present jointly. But Louis presented the entire project himself without giving Maria a chance to speak. She’s angry and resentful, and feels betrayed. Nonetheless, she doesn’t want to come across as oversensitive, so she doesn’t tell Louis she’s upset. Instead she erupts occasionally with sarcasm (masking) and cheap shots (avoiding), which is jeopardizing their working relationship.
Maria’s story illustrates some of the pitfalls of not controlling your emotions. If you don’t control your emotions, matters will get worse. On the other hand, if you suppress them, they’ll still surface, for instance through sarcasm or body language. Either way, you’re being held hostage or driven by your emotions, which makes conversation impossible.
When you have strong feelings, you can influence and often change them by thinking through them. Choosing different emotions makes it possible to then choose behaviors that lead to better results.
When you’re in an emotional state, it’s not easy to mentally reboot to regain control. To do it, you need to understand how feelings develop.
First there’s a trigger (often something someone else says or does) to which we respond emotionally, with worry or by feeling hurt, etc. Our feelings then drive us to action (for instance, to silence or cheap shots). We go from trigger to feelings to action.
But someone’s actions alone can’t cause our emotional reactions. When faced with the same circumstances, different people have different emotional responses. What makes the difference is that after we see what someone did and before we react emotionally to it, we tell ourselves a story to interpret what we saw. This creates our emotions. Our Path to Action is: We see and hear something. We tell ourselves a story about it. We feel. We act.
Since we are the one telling the story, we can take back control of our emotions by telling ourselves a different story.
Stories are your rationale for what’s going on. They’re your interpretations of the facts, helping to explain what you see and hear. They explain why, how, and what: Why did the other person act that way? How should I interpret it? What should I do?
As we come up with our own interpretation or stories, our body responds with strong emotions. It happens instantaneously — we tell the story and our temper flares before we know it. For example, when someone laughs at us, we take it as an insult and feel a surge of anger instantly without consciously thinking about it.
At first, we control our stories as we tell them, but once they’re told, the stories control us. They dictate how we feel, and then how we act. As a result our stories control the outcomes of our crucial conversations.
However, the same set of facts can be used to spin infinite stories. We can tell different stories and break the emotions/actions loop.
If you want more positive results from your crucial conversations, change the stories you tell yourself, even in the heat of the moment.
To slow down your story-telling process and adrenaline rush, retrace your Path to Action one step at a time (going backward to the triggering event, starting with how you’re behaving):
By retracing your path, you enable yourself to think about, question, and change one of more of the elements.
Examine Your Behavior
If you realize you’re slipping into silence or violence (being verbally aggressive), stop and take stock. Take an honest look at what you’re doing. Don’t try to justify your actions. If you tell yourself your violent behavior is a necessary tactic, you won’t see the need to reconsider your actions.
To be objective, consider how others would see your actions
Identify Your Feelings
After examining your behavior, the next step in retracing your path is exploring your feelings.
Identifying your emotions can be difficult — many people can’t accurately describe their feelings. They might say they’re angry when they’re feeling embarrassment and surprise. Or they might not realize it when they’re angry.
To develop emotional literacy:
Knowing what you’re really feeling helps you take a more accurate look at what is going on and why. You’re more likely to take an honest look at the story you’re telling yourself if you can admit your true feelings.
Once you’ve identified what you’re feeling, stop and ask: Is that the right emotion under the circumstances? Challenge the illusion that what you’re feeling is the only right emotion under the circumstances.
By questioning your feelings, you open yourself up to question your stories. Question whether the emotions and the story behind them (which is only one of many possible explanations) are accurate.
Don’t confuse stories with facts: When you generate stories instantly, you get so caught up in the moment that you begin to believe your stories are facts. You confuse subjective conclusions with data/facts. (Remember: Stories are our interpretations of facts.)
Focus on what’s observable, for instance on what someone said or did. Ask yourself: Am I focusing on an actual behavior or a conclusion? What somebody did is objective and verifiable. What you think about what the person did is a subjective conclusion.
Watch for emotionally charged terms: She scowled at me; he made a sarcastic comment (these express judgments). Judgments and attributions create strong emotions; they are stories, not facts. Less volatile descriptions allow for broader interpretations of someone’s behavior.
Beware of ‘Clever Stories’
Our stories fall into one of two categories:
The second category comprises clever stories, which allow us to feel good about behaving badly.
They often start with a sellout — an instance in which we’ve consciously acted against what we know is right. For example our sellout may be that we refused to let someone merge into traffic when we should have. After the fact, we tell a story characterizing the other person as a bad driver to justify our rude behavior.
Other common sellouts:
You can either own up to your sellout or try to justify it. Instead of admitting errors, we often tell clever stories to justify them.
Clever stories take three basic forms.
1. Victim stories — It’s not my fault: With victim stories you portray yourself as innocent. Someone else did something and you’re suffering as a result.
Sometimes, you may be an innocent victim, but more often you intentionally ignore the role you played in the problem. You tell your story in a way that avoids addressing what you did that might have contributed to the problem.
For example, you complain that your boss disrespected you or treated you unfairly when she took you off a big project. But you neglect to acknowledge that you contributed to the situation by not letting her know you were behind on the work, leaving her in the lurch.
2. Villain stories — It’s someone else’s fault: You may also create stories that portray others as villains. You exaggerate your own innocence by overemphasizing the other person’s guilt or stupidity.
For example, You might describe a boss who is gung ho about quality as a control freak who likes to make employees miserable, rather than acknowledge making mistakes yourself. Labeling (e.g. control freak) is common in villain stories. It’s a way of dehumanizing people, so you feel OK about attacking them.
Victim and villain stories reflect a double standard — when you make a mistake, you’re a victim; when others make mistakes they’re villains for inconveniencing or hurting you.
3. Helpless stories: You portray yourself as powerless to do anything constructive. You convince yourself you have no good alternatives, which justifies your actions.
For example, you might say: “If I didn’t yell, he wouldn’t listen,” or “If I confronted the boss, she’d get angry at me.”
Victim and villain stories explain why we’re in the situation we’re in. Helpless stories explain why we can’t do anything to change our situation.
Helpless stories often grow from villain stories and offer fool’s choices — we can be honest and ruin the relationship or stay silent and suffer. We attribute unchangeable traits to others. For example, we claim that because a colleague is a control freak (villain story), we can’t give her feedback; control freaks can’t handle it. We can’t change that (helpless story).
Why We Resort to Clever Stories
Tell the Full Story
Once you learn to recognize the clever stories you tell yourself, you can learn the final skill for mastering your stories: Changing clever stories into useful stories. Telling a useful story instead creates emotions that lead to constructive actions, such as dialogue.
The key to transforming a clever or self-justifying story into a useful one is telling the full story. Clever stories leave out important information about ourselves, others, and about our options. They become useful stories when we add the missing information.
When you fill in the missing details, victims become actors, villains are humans, and helplessness is replaced with action.
1. Victims become actors: When you start describing yourself as a victim, ask: What’s my role in the problem?
Maybe you did something to help cause the problem, not necessarily from malicious motives, but perhaps from thoughtlessness. Considering your own role helps you see how you’ve minimized your mistakes and exaggerated the role of others.
For example, you may be upset because a coworker always seems to leave the difficult or less desirable tasks for you. But the missing detail is that you’ve never spoken up about it or made any attempt to learn why she does this.
2. Villains become humans: When you find yourself blaming others, stop and ask: Why would a reasonable person do this? There are a variety of possible reasons for everything. Asking this question helps us to humanize others, and to assume personal accountability.
The point is not to excuse others’ bad behavior but to address our own stories and emotions.
Considering alternate motives allows us to open our minds and engage in dialogue — so we can learn their true motives.
For example, the coworker who seemed to avoid tough jobs jumped in recently to help you with an important assignment. Your initial reaction was to be suspicious of her motives (maybe she was trying to make you look bad), but on second thought, maybe she really was trying to help you.
3. Helpless gives way to action: When you find yourself wallowing in helplessness you can tell the full story by returning to your original motive. Ask yourself what you really want. Reject the fool’s choice that’s made you feel helpless, by asking what you should be doing to get what you want.
By refusing helplessness and blaming others you force yourself to use your dialogue skills to address a problem rather than complaining about it.
For example, instead of feeling helpless to do anything about your coworker’s unhelpful behavior, you could prioritize your desire to have good work relationships and talk with her about how you could both contribute to this goal.
Returning to the example at the beginning of this chapter, in which Maria is upset with Louis for excluding her from the presentation they both work on, here’s how she could change her story.
So Maria scheduled a meeting, which she could go into with an open mind after going through the above process. Louis apologized for dominating the presentation, acknowledging that he talks too much when he gets nervous.They agreed to split future presentations into two halves, with each presenting a part.
By telling the full story we stop nonconstructive emotions and behaviors. We regain control and return to dialogue; we master our stories and emotions.
When we see and hear something that affects us, we tell ourselves a story explaining what happened, which then drives how we feel and behave. This can be counterproductive, but we can change our stories and therefore our emotions.
Think of a time when you felt very strongly about something someone said or did. What story did you tell yourself to generate your feelings?
Was it a clever story? What type — a victim, villain, or helpless story? How did you feel as a result?
Go back to the beginning and review the observable facts (what you saw and heard). Did you omit something about your own role? What alternative story could you tell based on the facts?
Sharing your point of view when you have something difficult to say isn’t easy, but you can learn to do it successfully. Remember, it’s important that everyone’s information, no matter how controversial, be included in the shared pool.
Most conversations start on autopilot with friendly small talk, but in high-stakes conversations your emotions kick in and you don’t do as well.
When it comes to sharing touchy information:
However, the best approach is to speak your mind completely, but in a way that makes it safe for others to hear and respond.
Example: The Suspicious Affair
A wife finds a hotel receipt and mistakenly thinks her husband is having an affair. The worst way to handle a touchy situation like this would be to plunge in with an accusation followed by a threat — that’s what most people would do.
But there’s a constructive way the woman can share and resolve her concerns using several dialogue steps (with the acronym STATE). More on those steps in a moment.
To speak honestly when it could offend others, you have to maintain safety by blending confidence and humility.
Confidence: You must have the confidence to say what needs to be said to the appropriate person (and not complain to someone else), and confidence that you can speak honestly without attacking the other person.
Humility: You must be humble enough to realize that you don’t know everything, and you don’t always have to get your way. Your opinion is a starting point for discussion. With new information you might change your mind — so you express your opinion and also encourage others to express theirs.
To have a healthy conversation about a tough topic, you must take care not to violate respect or safety with threats and accusations, despite your worst fears. To create conditions conducive to dialogue:
Use five skills with the acronym STATE to talk about sensitive topics:
The first three skills involve what to do. The last two are how to do it.
Facts set the stage for all sensitive conversations. Start with the facts alone (which are observable), not your emotion-driven story (your conclusions). For example, a hotel receipt in your husband’s name is a fact — you can see it. Your belief about why he visited the hotel (absent his explanation) is a conclusion.
Starting with your worst-case scenario or conclusion creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you blurt out your conclusions, it’s ineffective. You expect bad results and get bad results. Or you hold the story inside because you feel it’s too risky to share — tension builds up and you blow up, getting the bad results you feared.
Starting with facts avoids these problems. Here’s why:
If you simply mention the facts, the other person may not understand the implications. For example, if you tell an employee, “I noticed you had company software in your briefcase,” they may not understand that you’re talking about a potential policy violation. You have to follow-up that observation with your conclusions.
It’s the combination of facts plus the conclusion there’s a problem that requires face-to-face discussion. When you tell your story:
Remember that the key to sharing controversial ideas is to blend confidence and humility. Express confidence by sharing your facts and stories clearly. Then, express humility by asking others how they see it. Encourage them to express their facts, stories, and feelings. Listen closely and be willing to rethink your story as more information is presented.
You’ll get people to listen if you describe both your facts and stories in a tentative, non-dogmatic way. Speaking tentatively means telling your story as a story, not presenting it as an incontrovertible fact. For example, start with phrases indicating you’re sharing an opinion, not asserting a fact: “In my opinion...”, or “I’m beginning to wonder whether…” (rather than, “The fact is…” or “It’s obvious to me that...”).
Speaking tentatively also means sharing in a way that shows confidence in your conclusions, but that also suggests you’re open to challenges.
You soften the message because you’re trying to add meaning to the pool, not force it on people. If you’re overly assertive, your information won’t be accepted (won’t make it into the pool).
In fact, when talking with people holding opposite opinions, the more convinced and forceful you act, the more resistant they’ll be. Speaking in absolutes decreases your influence. Conversely, the more tentatively you speak, the more open people become to your opinions.
Being tentative isn’t manipulative. You’re tentative because your opinions may not be totally accurate or your information may be incomplete. At the same time, you shouldn’t pretend to be less confident than you are. Just be aware that your observations and stories could be flawed.
The Goldilocks Test
Your presentation should be neither too hard nor too soft, but just right. For example, if someone insists on telling you how to do something, don’t say: “I’m not stupid, you know.” (too hard) or “I know I’m a klutz, but…” (too soft). Instead, say: “I’m starting to feel like you don’t trust me. Is that what’s happening?” (just right).
Sometimes others are reluctant to share their paths (facts, stories, and feelings), and you need to be more encouraging. You need to make clear that no matter how controversial their ideas, you want to hear them. If they don’t feel comfortable speaking up, you can’t test the accuracy/value of your views.
This is especially important if you’re talking with someone with a tendency to move to silence (to make the fool’s choice of not saying anything to avoid risk). When others are reluctant to speak up, try these steps:
Example: The Suspicious Affair (cont’d)
Revisiting the example of a wife confronting her husband about hotel receipts shows how to apply the dialogue skills for discussing a sensitive subject.
Instead of immediately accusing him of infidelity, the wife applies STATE skills.
Share your facts: She simply states that she has discovered a receipt for a hotel near their home.
Tell your story: She shares that the receipt worries her because that’s how her sister learned that her husband was having an affair.
Ask for others’ paths: She invites him to help put her mind at rest.
Talk tentatively: She explains that while her husband hasn’t given her reason to doubt him, she’s still worried.
Encourage testing: She asks him to call the hotel immediately, which he does. They learn there was a billing error.
You can get into trouble by pushing your point of view too hard. It gets heated and you feel you have to win. Others resist, argue, or retreat into silence, so you push harder. In the end no one is listening, and nothing is added to the pool of information.
Here’s how things go wrong.
How To Change
When you feel compelled to convince others that your way is best:
When others shut down or blow up (resort to silence/violence), it’s important to get them to rejoin the dialogue. You can’t work through your differences until all parties add their input to the pool of information.
While you can’t force others to participate, you can take steps to make it more comfortable for them to do so. The key to encouraging participation is letting them know it’s OK to share their path to action (their facts and stories), regardless of how controversial it might be. Here’s how to do this.
Others need help to retrace their path to action, but most of us fail to do this.
We typically enter the conversation at the end of their path, when they’re starting to act out their story (wth silence or violence). Start where they are and help them work backward to the source — from feelings, to what they concluded, to what they observed.
To encourage others to share, use four listening tools: Ask, mirror, paraphrase, prime (AMPP).
Ask to get things going: Often all it takes to break an impasse is to seek to understand others’ views. When you show genuine interest, people feel less compelled to use silence/violence. For example, use phrases like, “What do you mean? I’d like to hear your concerns.” Other invitations include: “What’s going on?” “Please let me know if you see it differently.” “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings; I really want to hear your thoughts.”
Mirror to confirm feelings: Mirroring can help build more safety. It consists of playing the role of mirror by describing to the person how they look or act. We see their actions and reflect them back.
Mirroring is most useful when the other person’s tone/gestures are inconsistent with their words.
For example they may say, “Don’t worry, I’m fine,” when clearly they’re not fine. A mirroring response would be, “Really? It doesn’t sound like you are.” Explain that while the person may be saying one thing, his body language or tone belies it. For instance, “You look nervous about signing the contract. Are you sure you’re OK with buying this car?”
With your tone, convey that you’re OK with them feeling the way they’re feeling; respond calmly rather than being upset.
Paraphrase to acknowledge the story: When you get a clue for why the person is feeling the way they do, you can build additional safety by paraphrasing what you heard. Don’t just parrot back what they say, but put the message in your own words in abbreviated form. For instance, “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. You’re upset because…”
Don’t react negatively. Stay focused on figuring out how a reasonable person could have concluded this. Rephrase in a way that suggests it’s OK to speak, that you’re trying to understand.
Prime when you’re still stalled: When you believe another person still has something to share and might do so with further encouragement, you can try priming the conversation. Offer a guess at what the other person is thinking or feeling, and she may respond. For example, “Are you thinking that the only reason we’re doing this is to make money?”
Don’t Push Too Hard
When you can tell the other person has more to share, but isn’t sharing it, you may want to back off. Repeated attempts to encourage sharing can feel like pushing. So end the conversation tactfully, or ask what they want to see happen. This question helps them move toward problem solving (away from silence/violence).
Exploring another’s path (facts, story, feelings) when you disagree substantially can be unsettling.
However, you’re trying to understand their point of view, not necessarily agree with or support it. By making an effort to understand it, you’re agreeing to accept it as part of the pool of information; later you can share your point of view too.
So you explore what others think in order to understand why they’re feeling and behaving as they are.
Remember the ABC’s
When it’s your turn to talk, and your story differs a lot from what you just heard, use these three skills.
Agree: Don’t argue when you agree — just agree. Sometimes when people argue strenuously, they’re arguing over nuances. They actually agree on the important points. Most arguments are about the 5% to 10% of the facts and stories that people disagree on.
Although people eventually need to work through all their differences, you shouldn’t start with the nuances, but with an area of agreement. If you completely agree with the other person’s path, say so and move on.
Build: Look for points of agreement, and talk about those first. Then build by adding information that has been left out. (“I agree completely. In addition, I noticed that…”)
Instead of building on what we agree on, we tend to immediately jump on small points of disagreement, which we magnify. We learn from an early age to look for minor errors. In school, we learn that finding even the smallest errors in others’ facts or thinking wins praise and admiration from teacher and peers. Being right at the expense of others becomes a competition.
Instead of constructive dialogue you end up in “violent agreement,” or arguing strenuously even though you mostly agree.
Compare: When you do disagree, compare your path with the other person’s. Don’t suggest they’re wrong, suggest that you differ. The person may in fact be wrong, but you can’t be sure until you understand both sides — you just know that you differ.
Instead of starting with “Wrong!”, start with a tentative but honest, “I think I see things differently. Let me explain.” Then share your path using STATE skills. (Share your facts,Tell your story, Ask for others’ paths,Talk tentatively, Encourage testing.)
Once everyone contributes his or her information to a crucial conversation, the final step is action. All the conversational effort is moot unless there’s an action plan and follow-through to achieve results. This is a critical turning point at which new challenges can come up.
Groups often fail to convert the ideas into action and results for two reasons:
This chapter focuses on what it takes to move from ideas to action.
If you don’t clarify the conclusions and decisions emerging from the discussion, you can run into unmet expectations later on.
Problems develop in two ways:
To avoid these two problems, you need to decide how you’ll decide.
Dialogue isn’t decision-making. It’s a process for gathering all relevant information, which involves everyone. But the fact that someone has shared their input doesn’t mean they’ll get to participate in all decisions.
To prevent misunderstanding, it’s important to separate talking from decision-making: Make clear how decisions will be made, who will make them, and why.
Here are the typical starting points.
When you’re in a position of authority you decide which method of decision making you’ll use.
For example, managers and parents decide how to decide; it’s part of their responsibility as leaders. Vice presidents don’t ask hourly employees to decide pricing changes or product lines. Parents don’t ask kids to set their own curfew or make household decisions.
Leaders can turn decision making over to direct reports when warranted, but the person in authority still decides what method of decision making to use. Deciding what decisions to turn over and when is part of their stewardship.
When there’s no clear line, deciding how to decide can be quite difficult.
For example, if a teacher wants to hold your child back a year but you object, who decides? Who makes the decision should be discussed in the group. If you don’t talk and opinions differ, you’ll end up in a dispute. When authority is unclear, decide together how you’re going to decide.
Four Methods of Decision-Making
Four common ways of making decisions are: command, consult, vote, and consensus. They reflect increasing degrees of involvement. Increased involvement brings greater commitment but decreased efficiency. The method you use depends on the circumstances.
With command decisions, it’s not your job to decide what to do, only how to make it work. Decisions are made without others’ involvement.
Use this method when:
Decision-makers invite input from others before they decide. They consult with experts, those affected, and anyone whose opinion would be relevant. This can be an efficient way of gaining ideas and support without bogging down the decision-making process. After gathering ideas, decision-makers evaluate the options, make a choice, and then inform the broader population.
Voting is appropriate where you have a number of good options, and want to decide in the most efficient way. Members of the team realize they may not get their preferred choice, but aren’t going to debate it.
You talk until everyone agrees to one decision. This method has both pluses minuses. It can produce unity and good decisions, or it can be a waste of time.
It should be used only with:
Choosing the Right Decision-Making Method
In deciding which decision-making method to use, consider four questions;
Once you’ve made your decisions, it’s time for action. To avoid confusion or dropped balls, make assignments.
Assignments have four elements:
Include the follow-up method in the assignment. For example, you can tell your kids: “Text me when you’ve finished your homework. Then you can play with friends.” Use milestones: For example, “Let me know when you’ve completed your research, then we can meet and plan the next step.” But make sure milestones are linked to firm deadlines: “You have until the end of the month for the overall project.”
After all your hard work in crucial conversation, don’t depend on memory to ensure follow-through.
Four common ways of making decisions are: command, consult, vote, and consensus. Which method to use depends on the circumstances. You choose based on four questions: Who has a stake, who has the knowledge, who needs to be on board, and how many people need to be involved.
Think of an important decision you recently took part in or were affected by. How was the decision made?
What other decision making method could have been used? How might it have affected the decision?
People often think their situations are unique and that dialogue skills outlined in this book don’t apply, or won’t work. According to the authors, the skills do in fact apply to virtually any issue, although some problems are more challenging than others.
This chapter looks at some tough (but not uncommon) challenges and how to handle them.
You’re uncomfortable with the way you’re being treated, although you don’t view it as blatant harassment.
You find the behavior offensive, but it’s so subtle or sporadic that you’re hesitant to go to your boss or HR for fear of looking like you’re overreacting. Getting caught up in a villain story could drive you to respond in ways that end up hurting you.
Solution
Tell the full story. Admit it if you’ve put up with the behavior for a while without saying anything. Then discuss it with the other person. Try to treat the person as reasonable — even if the behavior isn’t.
After establishing a mutual purpose for the conversation, STATE your path. If you can be respectful but firm, the individual usually will stop the objectionable behavior. If the behavior ever crosses the line, contact HR to ensure your rights are protected.
What can you do when your spouse is highly sensitive to criticism? When you try to give constructive feedback they overreact.
When one or both partners in a marriage have short fuses, they may tacitly agree to not say anything about most problems to prevent blow ups. Issues have to be huge before they’re discussed.
To start with, STATE your path: Share your facts,Tell your story, Ask for others’ paths, Talk tentatively, Encourage testing.
Also:
Having a confidante and coach to give you helpful feedback is an important benefit of a healthy relationship.
At work, you get together as a team and talk about how to improve, but some of your teammates don’t do what they agreed to do.
In an effective team every team member is accountable. Team members speak up when they see violations. Lesser teams ignore problems or let the boss deal with them.
It’s your responsibility to speak up. When team members agree to a course of action, they must be willing to confront any team member who doesn’t live up to the agreement — or the whole thing can fall apart.
The team’s success depends not on flawless performance, but on teammates who hold crucial conversations with each other when necessary.
People who work for you seldom take initiative on anything. They hold back their opinions and say what they think you want to hear.
Challenge
When leaders experience deference or kissing up, which stems from fear, they make one of two mistakes:
Solution
Determine how you contribute to the problem. Ask a peer for honest feedback about your behavior. Develop and implement a plan, and seek ongoing feedback.
If the problem originated under previous leaders, bring it up at a team meeting and ask for advice. In your interactions with employees, reward risk takers, encourage opposing views, thank people when they’re honest, and play devil’s advocate.
Your colleague missed an important deadline, Now you wonder whether you should trust him again.
Trust isn’t an either/or proposition where you either trust someone or you don’t. It can evolve and it’s specific to the situation. You may trust someone in some circumstances but not others. You may trust someone’s motivation in a situation but not her ability.
Focus on the issue, not the person. Take small steps to rebuild trust — first, just try to trust them in the moment. You don’t have to trust them in every circumstance. Discuss your concerns using STATE skills: Talk tentatively about what you see happening.
Whenever you try to talk about an important problem, your spouse withdraws.
If someone doesn’t want to talk about tough issues, It’s because they believe it won’t do any good or they don’t feel safe doing so.
Work on yourself first (practice your skills).
Start with the least threatening issues. Try to make conversation safe. Be alert to when your spouse becomes uncomfortable. Speak tentatively (“I’m pretty sure you’re not intending to…”). Explore your partner’s path. Practice dialogue skills whenever you can.
Establish mutual purpose — help the person see a compelling reason for having the conversation.
Your team members do what they’re asked, but no more. If they encounter problems they give up.
It’s a straightforward process to point out and address obviously bad behavior or performance, and to reward good performance. Dealing with people who lack initiative or persistence falls into a gray area and is more challenging to address.
Deal with the overall pattern, rather than a specific instance.
If you want someone to take greater initiative, tell them. Give examples of when they faced a problem and gave up. Brainstorm ways the person could have been more persistent in coming up with a solution. Tell them you’re raising the bar.
Also, be aware of the ways you’re enabling someone’s lack of initiative. Clarify your expectations and put the responsibility on them.
You keep having to talk with people repeatedly about the same problem. You feel like you have to choose between nagging and putting up with the problem.
Some crucial conversations are ineffective because you’re focusing on the wrong thing.
For example, consider how you deal with someone who is habitually late. If you focus on the specific problem (being late) without talking about the bigger problem or pattern, you’ll have the same conversation repeatedly as the person continues to be late.
Focus on the pattern rather than on a single event — monitor behavior over time.
Use STATE skills to talk about the pattern (facts/observations, story, feeling, action).
For example, if a person is late for a meeting and pledges to be on time in the future, then is late again, discuss their failure to keep a commitment rather than their lateness. This issue is now about trust and respect.
How should you respond when people get angry, and then insubordinate?
Insubordination is rare, so when it happens it catches many leaders off guard. They buy time to figure out what to do. But this lets the person get away with egregious behavior, and it encourages future abuses.
(In dealing with rebellious kids, parents tend to respond in kind rather than buying time — they become angry and insulting.)
You cannot tolerate insubordination — speak up immediately. You need to stop disrespect before it gets worse. Change topics from the issue under discussion to how the person is currently acting. Let her know she is heading in a dangerous direction.
For instance, respond: “Let’s set aside this scheduling issue for a moment. The way you’re raising your voice and the words you’re using are disrespectful. I want to address your concerns, but I can’t do so if this continues.” If this doesn’t alleviate the problem, seek help from HR.
What can you do if someone has a hygiene problem, or something else that makes people avoid him but are embarrassed to bring up?
Because people avoid discussing sensitive issues, offenders can go for years without getting information that would be helpful to them.
Instead of directly addressing the offense, others often progress from silence to violence, making jokes, and being sarcastic and disrespectful. But the more time that elapses, the more painful it will be to the person when you do raise the issue.
Start by using contrasting: You don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings, but you do want to share important information.
Establish mutual purpose. Explain that you’re reluctant to raise a personal issue, but need to because it’s undermining the person’s work. Tentatively describe the problem without exaggerating, then move on to solutions.
Some people, especially children, play word games to excuse their actions or inaction when you confront them. For instance, when you tell kids they shouldn’t have done something, they respond that you never explicitly told them not to do it. How can you stop getting caught up in these games?
Challenge
Some creative individuals can come up with endless ways to explain why they didn’t know any better. Eventually they wear you down, and get away with slacking while others carry an unfair share of the load.
Solution
Focus on the pattern rather than the specific instance. Use STATE skills to discuss the pattern of playing word games and let them know they aren’t fooling anyone. Preempt word games by telling them how you expect them to behave in all instances in the future.
For example, you might respond: “You’re hurting your sister’s feelings when you call her ugly. Don’t say that or anything else that might hurt her feelings.” Then hold them accountable.
Sometimes when employees run into problems with an assignment or project, leaders don’t find out until it’s too late.
Leaders who are regularly being surprised are allowing it to happen. Typically, the first time an employee says, “Sorry but I ran into a problem,” leaders focus on the problem and fix it, thereby conveying that it’s OK to surprise them; they’ll take care of things.
Establish a clear “no surprises” rule. When you give someone an assignment, make clear that they need to either complete it as planned, or inform you immediately if they run into a problem.
The first time someone has a problem but didn’t inform you when the problem first came up, address it immediately: “We agreed you’d let me know immediately if you had a problem. You didn’t contact me — what happened?”
When you’re involved in a fast-moving crucial conversation, it can be hard to remember and apply the dialogue skills and principles. This chapter offers a simple suggestion for getting started, as well as a quick review of the principles and skills.
First, the suggestion: One way people have succeeded in improving their handling of crucial conversations is by focusing on just two key principles: Pay attention to what’s happening, and ensure safety.
1. Pay attention to what’s happening: Constantly ask yourself whether you’re in or out of dialogue. This makes a huge difference.
Even if you can’t remember the acronyms or steps you can help maintain dialogue by noticing whether you or others are falling into silence or violence. Even if you don’t know exactly how to fix the problem when you see it, it’s worth trying something to restore the dialogue.
You can use the statement, “I think we’ve moved away from dialogue,” to get back on track.
2. Ensure safety: When you notice that you and others have moved away from dialogue, do something to make it safer — for instance, asking a question and showing interest in others’ views.
Just do something to make others comfortable: smile, apologize if you’ve moved to silence or violence, or request a brief timeout. Although the book suggests specific skills (such as contrasting, mirroring, priming), there are many other things you can do to increase safety.
The next step is applying the book’s seven dialogue principles. To help you coach yourself or someone else through a crucial conversation, here’s a quick reference guide.
Quick Reference: The Seven Dialogue Principles
1. Know your heart
Skills: Focus on what you want; refuse the fool’s choice
Crucial questions: What do I really want? How should I be behaving to achieve what I want? What do I not want?
2. Make the conditions safe
Skills: Be alert to the point when the conversation turns crucial. Look for safety threats. Beware of reverting to your style under stress.
Crucial questions: Am I, or others, moving to silence or violence?
3. Make the content safe
Skills: Apologize if needed, use contrasting to ensure understanding, and use CRIB (Commit, Recognize, Invent, Brainstorm) to create a mutual purpose
Crucial questions: Why is safety at risk? Do we have a mutual purpose and mutual respect? What can I do to rebuild an environment of safety?
4. Control your emotions
Skills: Retrace your path, separate fact from story, watch for clever stories, tell the full story.
Crucial questions: What’s my story? Am I ignoring my role in the problem? Why would a reasonable person do what the other person did? How can I move toward what I want?
5. Share your stories
Skills: Share your facts, Tell your story, Ask for others’ paths, Talk tentatively, Encourage testing
Crucial questions: Am I actually open to others’ viewpoints? Am I expressing my own viewpoints?
6. Explore others’ paths
Skills: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime (AMPP); Agree, Build, Compare (ABC)
Crucial questions: Am I exploring others’ views? Am I using ABC skills to advance the conversation?
7. Move from conversation to results
Skills: Decide how you’ll decide. Document tasks and follow up.
Crucial questions: How will we make decisions? What deadlines do we agree to? How do we stay updated on progress?
Example: Dividing the Family Estate
Here’s an extended example to show the principles in action. It’s a discussion between you and your sister on dividing your mother’s estate, starting with the summer house. You want to be compensated for your expenses and hands-on care as your mother’s primary caregiver, while you feel your sister hasn’t contributed as much as you.
You discuss selling the summer house to pay for your expenses in taking care of the mother. Your sister snaps back: “Don’t guilt-trip me. I was working just as hard at my job and I sent money back to take care of Mom. If I weren’t traveling so much, I would have been happy to take care of her.”
It’s clear the conversation is getting heated. Take a step back.
Know your heart: Ask yourself what you really want (to be compensated fairly for money and time you contributed beyond what your sister contributed). Then ask yourself how you should best behave to achieve this goal.
Make the conditions safe: You see that you lack mutual purpose. You’re both defending your actions rather than discussing how to split the inheritance.
Make the content safe: Use contrasting to help your sister understand your purpose.
You: “I don’t want to drive a wedge between us, and I don’t want to make you feel guilty. But I do want to talk about how I feel I took on the bulk of the responsibility over the last few years. It took a big strain on me.”
Sister: “I did just as much as you did. Don’t you think I suffered?”
Control your emotions: You feel strongly that you deserve more. Retrace your path to understand the facts driving your feelings.
Share your stories: Share your facts and conclusions in a way that will make your sister feel safe in sharing her story.
You: “I spent lot of my money taking care of Mom, and I gave up a lot of time and career options to take care of her personally, instead of hiring a nurse. I feel I did more caregiving than you did, and I feel it’s fair to use what she left us to repay part of what I gave up.”
Explore others’ paths: Use inquiry skills (Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime) to explore your sister’s views. Then use ABC skills (Agree, Build, Compare) to explain how your view differs.
You: “Do you see it differently? I’d really like to hear.”
Sister: “I know I was traveling a lot and wasn’t around to take care of Mom in person as much as you. But I sent money back, and I visited whenever I could. I offered to pay for a nurse. I thought I was doing equal amounts of work as you, and so your complaint is coming out of nowhere.”
You (mirror, paraphrase): ”So you feel you were doing everything you could, and you’re now surprised that I felt it was unequal?”
Sister: “Yes.”
You (agree, build, compare): “I agree. You did help out a lot. Giving up money wasn’t easy for you, and your travel to see us was expensive. In terms of the nurse, Mom preferred someone she knew to take care of her, so I stepped in. On top of this, one thing you might not know about is her expenses near the end got pretty high. The new medication was more expensive, and insurance covered just a part of her costs. It added up, and I never talked to you about it.”
Move from conversation to results: Come to a consensus on what will happen, who will do what by when, and how you will follow up.
Sister: “So it’s these expenses you want to cover? How about we look them over and decide how to pay for them?”
You: “Sure - I’ve kept a record of all of these and of your contributions. How about we tally them up, and if there’s an inequality at the end, we use the inheritance to pay for the inequality first, then split the rest?”
How you are currently handling crucial moments when your actions can disproportionately affect your relationship or organization is determining the quality of your life and your effectiveness as a leader.
Next, take action. Identify a crucial conversation that you could improve right now, identify the principle and skill that will help, and try it. You needn’t be perfect, but if you persist, you will see dramatic improvement in your relationships and results.
At crucial moments, a little change can make a big difference.
In an Afterword published in 2012, the four authors reflect on what they learned in 10 years of teaching their dialogue principles and getting feedback from people who used the principles in crucial conversations. Their insights included: