Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

Highlights

• The key to real change lies not in implementing a new process, but in getting people to hold one another accountable to the process.
• 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.
• People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool—even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs. Now, obviously, they don’t agree with every idea; they simply do their best to ensure that all ideas find their way into the open.
• Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
• If you can’t get yourself right, you’ll have a hard time getting dialogue right. When conversations become crucial, you’ll resort to the forms of communication that you’ve grown up with—debate, silent treatment, manipulation, and so on.
• So the first step to achieving the results we really want is to fix the problem of believing that others are the source of all that ails us.
• Skilled people Start with Heart. That is, they begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens.
• When under attack, our heart can take a similarly sudden and unconscious turn. When faced with pressure and strong opinions, we often stop worrying about the goal of adding to the pool of meaning and start looking for ways to win, punish, or keep the peace.
• Sometimes, as our anger increases, we move from wanting to win the point to wanting to harm the other person.
• under the influence of adrenaline we start to see our options as unnecessarily limited. We assume we have to choose between getting results and keeping a relationship. In our dumbed-down condition, we don’t even consider the option of achieving both.
• We’re suggesting that people rarely become defensive simply because of what you’re saying. They only become defensive when they no longer feel safe. The problem is not the content of your message, but the condition of the conversation.
• As we’ve said before, when your emotions start cranking up, key brain functions start shutting down. Not only do you prepare to take flight, but your peripheral vision actually narrows. In fact, when you feel genuinely threatened, you can scarcely see beyond what’s right in front of you.
• 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 violence (trying to force meaning in the pool).
• The three most common forms of silence are masking, avoiding, and withdrawing.
• You’re on the wrong side of your eyeballs.
• Crucial conversations often go awry not because others dislike the content of the conversation, but because they believe the content (even if it’s delivered in a gentle way) suggests that you have a malicious intent.
• As people perceive that others don’t respect them, the conversation immediately becomes unsafe and dialogue comes to a screeching halt.
• Because respect is like air. As long as it’s present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it’s all that people can think about. The instant people perceive disrespect in a conversation, the interaction is no longer about the original purpose—it is now about defending dignity.
• When we recognize that we all have weaknesses, it’s easier to find a way to respect others.
• To stop arguing, we have to suspend our belief that our choice is the absolute best and only one, and that we’ll never be happy until we get exactly what we currently want. We have to open our mind to the fact that maybe, just maybe, there is a third choice out there—one that suits everyone.
  • Tags: [[consulting]] [[social-skills]]
• No matter how comfortable it might make you feel saying it—others don’t make you mad. You make you mad. You make you scared, annoyed, or insulted. You and only you create your emotions.
• Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story. We add meaning to the action we observed.
• Any set of facts can be used to tell an infinite number of stories. Stories are just that, stories. These explanations could be told in any of thousands of different ways.
• Either our stories are completely accurate and propel us in healthy directions, or they’re quite inaccurate but justify our current behavior—making us feel good about ourselves and calling for no need to change.
• Clever stories omit crucial information about us, about others, and about our options. Only by including all of these essential details can clever stories be transformed into useful ones.
• People who are skilled at dialogue have the confidence to say what needs to be said to the person who needs to hear it. They are confident that their opinions deserve to be placed in the pool of meaning.
• Facts provide a safe beginning. By their very nature, facts aren’t controversial. That’s why we call them facts.
• Be careful not to apologize for your views. Remember, the goal of Contrasting is not to water down your message, but to be sure that people don’t hear more than you intend. Be confident enough to share what you really want to express.
• When sharing a story, strike a blend between confidence and humility. Share in a way that expresses appropriate confidence in your conclusions while demonstrating that, if called for, you want your conclusions challenged.
• Catch yourself before you launch into a monologue. Realize that if you’re starting to feel indignant or if you can’t figure out why others don’t buy in—after all, it’s so obvious to you—recognize that you’re starting to enter dangerous territory.
• When reflecting back your observations, take care to manage your tone of voice and delivery. It is not the fact that we are acknowledging others’ emotions that creates safety. We create safety when our tone of voice says we’re okay with them feeling the way they’re feeling.
• Priming is an act of good faith, taking risks, becoming vulnerable, and building safety in hopes that others will share their meaning.
• Most arguments consist of battles over the 5 to 10 percent of the facts and stories that people disagree over. And while it’s true that people eventually need to work through differences, you shouldn’t start there.
• If you agree with what has been said but the information is incomplete, build. Point out areas of agreement, and then add elements that were left out of the discussion.
• Don’t allow people to assume that dialogue is decision making. Dialogue is a process for getting all relevant meaning into a shared pool.
• There are four common ways of making decisions: command, consult, vote, and consensus.