Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when the stakes are high — Book Summary

By Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Swizler

Conversations come in a variety of shapes, from friendly to professional, from low-risk to high-stakes, and from relaxed to tense, so how do you deal with conversations that are sensitive yet important to you?

Our daily interactions can hold pivotal defining moments, with outcomes that affect the quality of our relationships, careers, and lives. Many “defining” moments in our lives come from having crucial conversations (as these create significant shifts in attitude and behavior).

Picture this scenario and tell me if it sounds familiar:

• You walk into a progress update meeting 15-minutes late because your other meeting stretched past it’s scheduled time.
• The meeting host looks obviously irritated because you’ve arrived late and she’s giving you the silent treatment by completely ghosting you.
• Halfway through the meeting, you ask a question because things are unclear to you as the proposed approach conflicts with industry standards and company policy, and out of nowhere; one of your teammates lashes-out in a violent tirade saying “Well Captain Punctual, if you showed-up on time you would have the answers to your questions, so don’t waste our time because we have discussed this and have all agreed that there are no issues the conflict with compliance!”
• You feel offended and attack right back by stating “I’m just trying to understand because it wasn’t my fault that my other meeting went overtime, and I’m just trying to help by making sense of the situation.”
• Your teammate counters by saying “It’s not our fault that you don’t manage your time properly!”
• By now, you start fuming and feel personally attacked and your integrity becomes in question & become viscerally irritated that a blind man can see it.
• Everybody in the meeting gets awkwardly quiet and the meeting continues, yet everybody viscerally appears uncomfortable because of the huge elephant in the room that you’ve invited.

I think it’s safe to assume that I’m not the only one who had a tough confrontation as the one described here!

Crucial conversations are like a jigsaw puzzle with so many pieces that need to be carefully assessed and put together so that the picture becomes clear to all. I will attempt to present the different pieces of the puzzle (different aspects of crucial conversations) and then put them all together at the end of this article in a coherent and digestible structure.

The Elephant in the Room!

The expression “elephant in the room” means that a big issue everybody is aware of, but is being ignored because everybody finds it uncomfortable to discuss. The rational behind this idiom is that an elephant is impossible to ignore, but people can choose to behave as if the elephant didn’t exist at all.

A crucial conversation is like an elephant in the room in the sense that it’s uncomfortable to talk about it, but it’s right there in front of everybody to see as clear as daylight! As such, a critical confrontation needs to be handled with care especially when stakes are high. Many defining moments in our lives come from having crucial conversations as these create significant shifts in our attitude and behavior.

In essence, our goal during a crucial conversation is to know how to turn the big elephant in the room from something uncomfortable into a fun, loving, caring pink elephant that oozes trust, compassion, and a keen interest to resolve the problem at hand.

What are Crucial Conversations?

Below are the 3 characteristics that constitute a crucial conversation between two or more people:

1. Opposing Opinions
2. Strong Emotions
3. High Stakes

The outcome of crucial conversations are significant because they impact the lives of people involved and there are significant risks of negative consequences if not handled with care.

Navigating through a crucial conversation is like trying to diffuse a bomb. Touch the wrong button or cut the wrong wire and you setoff and explosion of emotion with unpredictable consequences!

How to Spot Crucial Conversations

Just like any disease, crucial conversations have signs that you could detect as soon as they start creeping into the conversation, so here are 3 signs that can help you spot a crucial conversation:

1. Physical Signs: You will display physical signs of stress & anxiety (sweating, increased heart rate, shallow breathing, stomach ache, dry throat, tension etc…)
2. Emotional Signs: You will experience a strong emotional response (fear, anger, or despair).
3. Behavioral Signs: you may avoid or engage in unhelpful behaviors (leaving the conversation, becoming quiet, not saying what you really think, raising your voice, etc…).

In these situations, stress response is likely to be triggered & effects of this can hinder your communication, where your voice and facial expression become harder to control. During crucial conversations, it becomes more difficult to structure thoughts, your breathing rate increases, and you turn into a hot mess due to your lack of control over yourself (physically, emotionally, and behaviorally).

How to Have a Crucial Conversation

We often fear crucial conversation because they involve confrontation (and who likes confrontations!), where our past experience has taught us that if we’re both emotional and honest, bad things are likely to happen! However, if we have the skills to speak-up both candidly and honestly, we can actually strengthen relationships while solving the problem at hand.

Taking Control Over Crucial Conversations (Silence vs. Violence)

The best way people can avoid an emotional explosion and prevent the conversation from derailing and going south is by either going to silent mode or becoming verbally violent.

The best way to prevent this from happening and flying off the handle is by keeping the dialogue going! If there is dialogue, there is chance that you could work through whatever issues that you’re encountering, and with deliberate practice before crucial conversations unfold (when stakes are high); you’d be able to delicately deescalate the situation. Practice creates muscle memory, so you reduce the changes of being caught off guard.

The 3 most common forms of Silence are:

1. Masking: play-down your actual reaction (sarcasm or sugarcoating).
2. Avoidance: changing the topic, not addressing the issue head-on, or changing the focus from yourself to others.
3. Withdrawing: leave the conversation (mentally, physically, or emotionally).

The 3 most common forms of Violence are:

1. Controlling: forcing the other person to adopt your viewpoint (evident by interrupting others, overemphasize facts, or dictate the discussion).
2. Labelling: putting labels on others or their ideas so that they can be dismissed (name-calling or generalizing).
3. Attacking: intimidating or ridiculing others using overbearing personalities and belittling others.

To avoid falling into silence or violence responses, you need to self-monitor by focusing on what you’re doing and what effects it has on the situation. From this awareness, you can adjust your behavior accordingly, where you don’t necessarily have to wait for a high-risk conversation to start doing this; rather, you start by assessing how you react and your behavior during crucial moments when you’re stressed (build a strong self-awareness).

Diffusing Tension During Crucial Conversations

To diffuse the tension in a crucial conversation and get back to productive dialogue, you need to understand the dynamics of a crucial conversation. First clue that you’re in a crucial conversation is being caught-off guard (you’re rarely prepared for crucial conversations). Everybody walks into crucial conversations with a story; a story that they tell themselves.

That story might go something like this:

• He doesn’t care about the job, and that’s why he’s always late to work!
• She doesn’t care about my project because she never shows-up to my meetings on time!
• My boss doesn’t care about me or my career as he believes I’m replicable and hasn’t given me a promotion in years!
• Nobody loves me because nobody ever calls me!

It’s important to make everyone feel comfortable enough to share their story or you risk diluting the discussion. You need to learn to step away from the discussion when it feels unsafe to share, so make it safe for others and then go back into the discussion.

There are 2 conditions where safety becomes at risk:

1. Lack of mutual Purpose (Do others believe I care about their goals in this discussion? Do they trust my intentions?)
2. Lack of mutual Respect (Do others believe I respect them?)

We are the Heroes of Our Own Stories!

At the outset of any discussion, we usually feel that we’re right and we tell ourselves a story to justify our behavior. These stories excuse us from taking responsibility and having to acknowledge our mistakes, and here are some examples of prominent stories that we tell ourselves during crucial conversations as they start going south:

• Victim Stories: telling yourself that it’s not your fault, that you’re innocent, and that you haven’t contributed to the problem.
• Villain Stories: blaming others for everything, judging them as having the worst possible motives, and justifying your own behavior.
• Helpless Stories: telling yourself that you are powerless & can’t do anything, so you take the option of doing nothing.

Save the drama for you mama! You need to turn these stories into useful stories so that you experience less disruptive emotions and thus leading you to productive dialogue, and here are some examples of how to tell yourself better stories:

• Turn Victims into Actors: ask yourself; am I playing-down my role in this issue while amplifying others’ roles? Recognize that in most situations, you have added to the issue in some way (story seasoning).
• Turn Villains into Humans: ask yourself; why would a decent person do this? Swap your judgement with compassion and self-justification with personal responsibility.
• Turn Helpless into Hopeful: ask yourself; what do I really want for me, for others, for our relationship? How would I behave if I really wanted to solve the problem?

How to Transition from Hearing to Listening

It can be difficult if the other person you’re speaking with is experiencing a highly emotional reaction, if they’re not sharing, or if they’re very sensitive because they’ve been put on the defensive. It’s hard to reach a resolution in these situations, which is where the 4 listening tools (AMPP) can help deescalate the situation, dilute the tension, and encourages others to feel safe to share:

Ask: for their stories by expressing interest in hearing their side of the story:

• “I’d really like to hear what you think about…”
• “Help me understand where you’re coming from by… ”

Mirror: to confirm feelings and respectfully acknowledge the emotions that they’re feeling.

• “You look unsure…”
• “You seem upset…”
• “You appear frustrated…”

Paraphrase: take what the other person has said and put it into your own words to demonstrate that you’re sincerely trying to understand their point of view. This confirms that you’re listening and you’re trying to fully understand because their view is valued.

• “So what I think you’re saying is…”
• “Let’s see if I’ve understood this…”
• “Let me repeat what you’ve just said to make sure that I understand where you’re coming from …”

Prime: if others continue to hold back then state what you think the other person is thinking, which should only be used if the other three tools haven’t worked (this is your last resort).

• “I’m guessing you think I’m being unfair…”
• “I believe you think I’m not listening to what you’re saying because…”

Managing Crucial Conversations — Priming!

Priming a person is like priming a water pump; when you prime a pump you often need to pour water into the pump to initiate the cycle and get the pump going. Often times, you could get a conversation up to speed by making good faith guesses at what your conversation partner is thinking.

Making a good faith guess requires you to form 2 beliefs about the conversation:

1. The person I’m talking with is a rational, reasonable, and decent person.
2. I’m largely responsible for this conversation going sideways and I’m willing to own-up to it.

With these two foundational beliefs, any attempt to guess what your conversation partner is thinking will come with a dose of good-will and a sense of humility, which will get the conversation back on track to productive dialogue.

You’re Damned if you Do & Damned if you Don’t!

Sometimes you could do everything right at the beginning of a crucial conversation, yet the other person ends-up flying-off the handle and the conversation takes a nose dive to the worst and the conversation ends-up being a heated argument! That’s because the other person perceives you as an opponent and an enemy that must be defeated at all cost to get their way! As far as they’re concerned, only one man should stand, and if they have to win, you surely have to loose! (Sounds familiar 😉?)

To diffuse the situation, consider the ABC approach for winning the other person over; especially if disagreement persists:

• Agree: find common ground where you agree. “I agree that these last three weeks have been difficult…”
• Build: build on what you’ve agreed upon with something they have missed or didn’t know. “I’m also aware that the whole department has been overworked over the past quarter…”
• Compare: compare the differences between your views, but don’t suggest that their view is incorrect; just compare. “It seems to me that you feel that it’s been difficult because of the changes in strategy. From my perspective, it’s because people aren’t comfortable reporting to the new management yet.”

Getting the Dialogue Back on Track

When emotions escalade, get the discussion back to dialogue mode by using sentences such as:

• “I don’t want to get into an argument, I just want to find a solution for both of us to get the job done: Common Goal or Purpose”
• “I know that we both care about: Common Value”

Then follow it up by saying; “Let’s see if we can find a way that would allow both of us to get what we want”.

At this point, if the person you’re talking to is giving you the “Silent Treatment”, try nudging them back into productive dialogue by priming their point of view. You do this by challenging the other person’s assumptions about the situation using open-ended “W” questions (avoid binary questions; yes/no questions).

Prepare for Crucial Conversations

If you approach a crucial conversation with a story and a conclusion already in mind, there is no room for dialogue because your mind is already made-up, and chances are that the conversation would head in an area that is unfavorable to you.

For there to be any hope for productive dialogue, you must assume that you don’t know the full story and you need the help of the other person you’re talking to understand where they’re coming from to get the full picture! An effective way to do this is by challenging your assumptions by replaying the situation as you saw it using a “When… I…” dialogue; like this:

• “When you don’t show-up to work on time, I feel that you don’t care about what we’re doing here and don’t respect other people’s time.”
• “When you don’t show-up to my project progress meetings, I fear that you don’t care about this project and you’re not putting-in the same effort as that of your colleagues.”
• “When you keep playing with your phone during meetings, I feel that you’re disrespecting those who are talking notes.”
• “When you don’t answer my calls or take initiative to call me back, I feel that you’re abandoning me and I’m not on your radar.”

After going through your “When… I…”, invite them to share their story by saying:

• “I’m probably not seeing the full picture, can you help me see what’s going on?”
• “Something doesn’t seem right and I’m probably missing something, can you help me understand what I’ve missed?”
• “This behavior is not like you, what’s happening that I’ve missed?”
• “Can you help me understand what’s going-on?”

When you’re using a “When… I…” invite in your dialogue, you’re neither being Passive nor Aggressive, rather, you’re being Assertive with the facts and honestly sharing your point of you, and you’re demonstrating that your keen on understanding the situation. Chances are that the person you’re confronting will be less inclined to defend their character and more inclined to explain the situation from their point of view and get back to productive dialogue.

Winning the Other Person Over

To avoid a yelling match and get back to productive dialogue, you must convince the other person that you’re not their opponent or their enemy. In fact, you have to convince them that you’re on the same side.

To do this, you have to find and communicate one of the following 3 common grounds:

• Common Goals
• Common Values
• Common Purpose

When you find common ground, you realize that you and your conversation partner realize that you have conflicting strategies to achieve the same ultimate goal! Once you’ve identified and communicated that ultimate goal, your conversation turns from a fight into something along the lines of a brainstorming discussion.

Prepare for Crucial Conversation

The more you engage in dialogue, the greater chance you are at finding agreement points and the more likely you are to work together with others to resolve the problems that are at the heat of a crucial conversation.

Questions to consider asking yourself during crucial convictions:

• What do I really want here?
• What is the highest purpose (ultimate goal)?
• Why am I having this discussion?
• What is the ultimate goal?
• What is the right place and time to have this crucial conversation?
• What does my higher-self want (long-term goals)? What’s at stake?
• What is the motive that sparked their emotional response?

The key skills to develop in order to master asking these questions during crucial conversation and preventing the heated discussion from escalating into a fight or argument includes:

• Mentally step away from the conversation
• Step above the current conversation by separating emotions from facts
• Think about the bigger picture

Turning Crucial Conversations into Actions!

If people don’t follow-up on their promises or are unsure how the decisions will be made, ideas may not be put into action and the situation becomes diluted.

There are 4 types of decision-making strategies for you to consider:

1. Command: the authority makes the decision without the involvement of others & they explain their reasoning.
2. Consult: the authority invites others to provide information to influence them before making a decision. Consultation is important when: many people are affected by the decision, it’s easy to gather the information, people caring about the decision, and there are multiple options.
3. Vote: this is where an agreed-upon percentage swings the decision. It’s used when there are multiple strong options with no clear winner. It shouldn’t be used when people won’t support the outcome if it goes the way they oppose (Never use voting instead of dialogue).
4. Consensus: everyone honestly agrees with the decision that all has agreed upon and supports it wholeheartedly. This is only used for high-stakes and complex issues. It’s important to assume that not all participants will use this as their first choice.

To decide which decision-making process that you could use; ask the following questions:

• Who cares?
• Who has the expertise needed to make the decision?
• Who must agree with the decision?
• How many people should be involved?

Transferring decision into action involves the following:

• Who? Allocate each responsibility to a person (owner).
• What? What exactly is their responsibility, so make this is very clear by writing it down.
• By when? Set realistic deadlines.
• Who will Follow-up: Decide how you will follow-up and what will you measure to track progress.
• Document the decisions made and all of the commitments promised.
• Hold People Accountable to their promises or it’s time for another crucial conversation session 😊.

Putting it All Together: Principles for Successfully Handling Crucial Conversations

Here are the 9 steps of how to successfully handle a crucial conversation to come-out on top:

Before: Before the Conversation

1. Start with Heart: Before you begin, examine your motives by asking yourself what you really want for: you, the other person, and for the relationship? This question activates the cognitive side of your brain and diffuses your strong emotional side, which deescalates the situation.

2. Prepare to STATE Your Path: STATE (Share your facts [what do you see and hear & how it differs from expectations], Tell your story [sometimes facts don’t always paint the whole picture], Ask for others’ paths [demonstrate humbleness], Talk tentatively [tell your story as a story NOT as facts & avoid absolutes], and Encourage testing [sincerely invite differing opinions]), so make sure you identify only the facts of the situation and the story you tell builds as a result of those facts, NOT the other way around!

3. Identify a Mutual Purpose & Desired Outcome: Identify common goals, values, or purpose that both of you care about (common ground). Clearly outline the actions or outcomes you’d like to see, and if you can’t identify these beforehand; ask the other person how you can solve the issue together.

4. Practice: Practice crucial conversation skills ahead of time to prepare for crucial conversations when they arise because practice activates muscle memory so the reaction becomes automatic. (Good practice makes perfect!)

During — Your Meaning: At the Beginning of the Conversation

5. Get Buy-In: Begin by getting the other person to agree with you (try to get to 3 Yeses) to neutralize the tension and have the conversation going in the direction you desire. If the other person wants to discuss something else or isn’t prepared to have the discussion now, reschedule for another time to meet and discuss.

6. Clarify and Agree: Reach agreement with the other person that there is an issue, identify the issue, and clearly articulate what a successful resolution would look like for both parties (level both perspectives).

During — Their Meaning: During the Conversation

7. Make It Safe: The antidote to defensiveness during crucial conversations is to make it safe for others to speak their minds by helping them understand that you respect them and care about their interests as much as you care about resolving the problem. When they believe this, they open-up to your views and turn from hearing to listening because when they don’t open-up, they shut-down and you reach a stalemate at best. After you create a safe environment, confidently share your facts and tell your story the way you see it.

8. Invite Dialogue & Listen: Once you’ve safely stated your path, invite the other person to share their differing opinion. Encourage the other person to disagree with you and then listen attentively. Those who are best at crucial conversations want to learn; NOT insist on their way. If your goal is to dump-on others, they’ll resist you, whereas, if you are open to hearing others’ points of view, they’ll be more open to yours. (It’s all about give-and-take!)

After: At the End of the Conversation

9. Move to Action: It’s easy to let matters fall between the cracks, so when ending a crucial conversation, document Who does What by When, and how you will Follow-Up (measure progress). This will help you turn a conversation into real action that would yield fruitful results.

Where to Go from Here?

To start developing your skills for crucial conversations, it’s best to first reflect on how you usually respond in these high stake situations and analyze your responses. Consider asking for feedback from trusted friends who won’t feel shy from giving you brutally honest feedback about how they view your ability to handle stressful situations. After running through a self-assessment exercise, you can discover your strengths and weaknesses so that you’ll know which areas to focus on. I can’t stress enough on the importance of deliberate practice to build-up your muscle memory so reactions become automatic and you’d avoid falling prey to the wrath of the other person during crucial conversations.

Takeaways

1. Crucial conversations are when opinions vary, stakes are high, and emotions run strong.
2. During crucial conversations, people fall into one of three categories: those who digress into threats and name-calling, those who revert to silent fuming, and those who speak openly, honestly, and effectively.
3. Those who master crucial conversations avoid the fool’s choice, where they think that they must choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend, or between candor and kindness.
4. During crucial conversations, focus on what you’re higher self wants and NOT what your base self wants.
5. During crucial conversation, find mutual purpose to neutralize the tension and get back to productive dialogue.
6. When communicating, stay focused on your goals to avoid reacting emotionally (only possible with deliberate practice before crucial conversations).
7. Create safe conversations by showing the other person you value their opinion.
8. Use the STATE method to resolve conflict when it arises (Share your facts, Tell your story, Ask for others’ paths, Talk tentatively , and Encourage testing).
9. There are four steps you can take to really listen to someone, summarized in the acronym AMPP: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, and Prime.
10. When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations; skilled people find a way to get all relevant information out in the open.
11. People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool of views.
12. Whenever we find ourselves arguing, debating, running away, or otherwise acting in a defensive way, it’s because we don’t know how to share meaning.
13. The first step towards achieving the results that we really want is to fix the problem of believing that we’re always right and others are the source of all of our problems. (Save your drama for your mama!)
14. People who are best at dialogue realize that the only person whom they can continually inspire, change, or shape their opinion with any degree of success is the man in the mirror.
15. Skilled people Start with Heart; that is, they begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens.
16. Skilled people maintain focus by sticking with their goals and what they want; and not making foolish choices, and they believe that dialogue is an option regardless of the circumstances.
17. During crucial conversations when the stakes are high, our motives usually change without any conscious thought on our part.
18. Fear during crucial conversations can cause us to both push too hard and withdraw from the conversation altogether.
19. People rarely become defensive because of what you’ve said, rather it’s because they no longer feel safe, so the problem is not the content of your message, but the condition of the conversation.
20. Silence is characterized by Masking (sarcasm, sugarcoating, or couching), Avoiding sensitive subjects, or Withdrawing from the conversation altogether.
21. Violence consists of Controlling (interrupting, overstating facts, speaking in absolutes, etc…), Labeling to dismiss others under a stereotype or category, or Attacking through belittling or threatening.
22. Others don’t create emotions for you; you create your own emotions, and then when you create strong emotions, you either find a way to master them or fall prey to their detrimental influence on your behavior.
23. Stories are our interpretations of the facts, providing a rationale for what’s going on, and we use them to explain the why, how, and what.
24. The end of a crucial conversation is risky because if you aren’t careful about how you classify the conclusions and decisions, you can violate expectations.
25. When the line of authority for making decisions is unclear, use your best dialogue skills to get meaning into the pool of ideas, so jointly decide how to decide on the way moving forward.
26. Make decisions by commanding, consulting, voting, and reaching consensus because these represent increased involvement, which increases commitment, but decreases efficiency.
27. Voting is best suited in situations where efficiency is the highest value, and you’re selecting from a number of good options.
28. Assign responsibilities to people by specifying who, does what, by when, and how will you follow-up?
29. When passing out assignments, “we” can lead someone to believe that others are taking on the responsibility, so assign a name to every responsibility (task).
30. To help clarify deliverables, use contrasting to explain what you don’t want, or make things concrete by pointing to a prototype or sample that others can touch and feel.

The Maverick

www.DarTec.com.sa

Hashim@dartec.com.sa