The Art of Crucial Conversations
The Art of Crucial Conversations by Tina Lamont
I recently came across the concept of crucial conversations. What’s a Crucial Conversation? And Who Cares? A crucial conversation is a discussion between people usually emotionally charged, where there may be a range of conflicting opinions or there is a lot at stake. When we face crucial conversations, we can do one of three things: We can avoid them, we can face them and handle them poorly, or we can face them and handle them well. Ironically, the more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to handle it well. We often hold things inside by going silent until we can take it no longer—and then we drop a bomb. In short, we move between silence and violence—we either don’t handle the conversation, or don’t handle it well. We may not become physically violent, but we do attack others’ ideas and feelings. When we fail a crucial conversation, every aspect of our lives can be affected—from our careers, to our communities, to our relationships, to our personal health. This is what is at the heart of the book “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High” by (authors) Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler. It resonated with me as I reflected on the number of times we miss that crucial moment to speak up. This book focuses on techniques we can use to hold such conversations in a positive space when surrounded by highly charged emotions. Their findings are based on 25 years of research with 20,000 people.
Their model has essentially 7 steps:
- 1) Start with the heart (i.e. empathy and positive intent)
- 2) Stay in dialogue
- 3) Make it safe
- 4) Don’t get hooked by emotion (or hook them)
- 5) Agree a mutual purpose
- 6) Separate facts from story
- 7) Agree a clear action plan
This book is well worth a look. I have also included a link to a conference presentation by Joseph Grenny, one of the authors, Mastering the Art of Crucial Conversation…enjoy!