Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

What’s a crucial conversation?

• You can measure the health of relationships, teams, and organizations by measuring the lag time between when problems are identified and when they are resolved
• If you fail to discuss issues you have with your boss, your life partner or your peer, those issues won’t magically disappear. Instead, they’ll become the lens you see the other person through. And how you see always shows up in how you act.
• 70% of the success of a crucial conversation happens in your head, not through your mouth

Choose your topic

• Crucial conversations are most successful when they are focused on one issue
• When faced a complex problem, we naturally default to one of two mistaken directions:
  • Easy over hard. If you’ve concluded that your direct report is incompetent at some aspect of their job, you might sugarcoat the problem by addressing minor mistakes
  • Recent over right. We tend to focus on the most recent event or behavior rather than the one that matters the most.
• 3 signs you’re having a wrong conversation
  • Your emotions escalate. Even if the conversation goes well you feel frustrated b/c you know something important needs to be addressed
  • You walk away skeptical. Even if you get to agreement, you doubt that changes you settled on will solve the real problem.
  • You’re in a deja vu dialogue. If you have the same conversation with the same person a second time, the problem is not them, it’s you
• To pick the right topic, you need to unbundle, choose and simplify the issues involved. Acronym CPR
  • Unbundle
    • Content. Example: your coworker failed to get you marketing analytics that you needed to finish a report for your manager. Now your neck is on the line.
    • Pattern. The next time the same problem comes up, think pattern. The first time something happens, it’s an incident. The second time it might be a coincidence. The third time, it’s a pattern.
    • Relationship. As problems continue, they can begin to impact relationship. It gets to deeper concerns about trust, competence, or respect.
    • To unbundle, you can keep it at content, move to pattern, or talk relationship.
  • Choose
    • Filter all issues through a single question: “What do I really want?”. Do you remember this question from (ref to ask more say less)?Alight the topic with priority.
  • Simplify
    • Simplify what you want to discuss. The more words you take to describe the issue, the less prepared you are to talk.
• Placing a bookmark. Sometimes you talk about an issue and hear a few new issues back. It’s up to you what you want to address: stick to the original issue or move to the new one. But never allow the topic to change without acknowledging you’ve done it.

Start with heart

• Focus on what you really want. Ask yourself:
  • What do I really want for myself?
  • What do I really want for others?
  • What do I really want for the relationship?
  • What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?
  • What do I really want for myself in the long term?

Master my stories

If strong emotions keep you stuck in silence, violence, try these steps:

• Retrace your path
  • Examine your behavior. Ask yourself what you are doing
  • Put your feelings into words
  • Spot your story. What creates these emotions?
  • Separate fact from story. What evidence do you have to support this story?
  • Watch for clever stories. Victim, villain, helpless stories
• Tell the rest of your story
  • What are you pretending not to notice about your role in the problem?
  • Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?
  • What do I really want?
  • What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?

Learn to look

• At content and conditions
• For when things become crucial
• For safety problems
• To see if others are moving toward silence or violence
• For outbreaks of your style under stress

Make it safe

People never become defensive about what you’re saying. They become defensive because of what they think you are saying it (the intent).

You either have a bad intent toward them or they misunderstood your good intent.

Two conditions of safety

People need to know that

• You care about their concerns (mutual purpose)
• You care about them (mutual respect)

Build safety

• Share your good intent
• Apologize when appropriate
• Contrast to fix misunderstandings
  • Tell what you do and don’t mean
• Create a mutual purpose

CRIB

• Commit to seek mutual purpose
  • Make a commitment to stay in the conversation until you find something that serves everyone
• Recognize the purpose behind the strategy
  • Ask people why they want what they are pushing for?
  • Know what people’s real purpose is
• Invent a mutual purpose
  • See if you can invent a long term purpose
• Brainstorm new strategies
  • With a clear mutual purpose, search for a solution that serves everyone

State my path

5 skills to hold a crucial conversation. Can be easily remembered with the acronym STATE:

• What to do:
  • Share your facts
  • Tell your story. Explain what you are beginning to conclude
  • Ask for others’ paths. Encourage others to share both their facts and their stories
• How to do:
  • Talk tentatively. State your story as a story, don’t disguise it as a fact
  • Encourage testing. Make it safe for others to express their views

Explore others’ paths

There are 4 listening tools (AMPP), if a person goes to silence or violence and doesn’t share their facts and stories:

• Ask. Ask to get things rolling
  • What’s going on?
  • I’d really like to hear your opinion on this
  • Please let me know if you see it differently
• Mirror. Increase safety by acknowledging the emotions people are feeling
  • You say you’re ok but the tone of your voice sounds upset
  • You seem angry with me
• Paraphrase to acknowledge the story
• Prime. Your best guess at what other person is thinking or feeling

As you begin to respond:

• Agree. Agree when you share views
• Build. If others leave something out, agree where you share views; then build
• Compare. Don’t suggest others are wrong. Compare your two views

Retake your pen

Remind yourself that your reaction to a hard feedback is under your control. 4 useful skills to address the information others share:

• Collect yourself. Breathe deeply, name your emotions
• Understand. Be curious. Ask questions, listen.
• Recover. Take some time to process what you heard and to recover emotionally.
• Engage. Examine what you were told. Look for truth. Reengage with the person who shared the feedback.

Move to action

Decide on how a decision will be made and make sure everyone knows. 4 methods of decision-making:

• Command. No involvement whatsoever
• Consult. Decision makers invite others to influence them before they make a choice
• Vote. Best suited where you’re selecting from a number of good options. Good time saver but should never be used when team members don’t agree to support the decision
• Consensus. You talk until everyone honestly agrees to one decision. It’s both a great blessing and a frustrating curse

Not all crucial conversations should end with a decision but it should always end with a commitment. Consider 4 elements:

• Who?
• Does what?
• By when?
• How will you follow up?

Summary

Crucial Conversations offers a comprehensive framework for handling high-stakes discussions, providing practical methods and actionable advice for improving communication, building trust, and reaching effective decisions. While reading the book cover-to-cover felt like a slog at times, the techniques and insights shared are genuinely helpful and valuable for anyone looking to navigate difficult conversations more successfully.