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Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

A PAPERBACK ORIGINAL

"Most books make promises. This one delivers. These skills have not only helped us to change the culture of our company, but have also generated new techniques for working together in ways that enabled us to win the largest contract in our industry's history."--Dain M. Hancock, President, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics

A powerful, seven-step approach to handling difficult conversations with confidence and skill

"Crucial" conversations are interpersonal exchanges at work or at home that we dread having but know we cannot avoid. How do you say what needs to be said while avoiding an argument with a boss, child, or relationship partner? Crucial Conversations offers readers a proven seven-point strategy for achieving their goals in all those emotionally, psychologically, or legally charged situations that can arise in their professional and personal lives. Based on the authors' highly popular DialogueSmart training seminars, the techniques are geared toward getting people to lower their defenses, creating mutual respect and understanding, increasing emotional safety, and encouraging freedom of expression. Among other things, readers also learn about the four main factors that characterize crucial conversations, and they get a powerful six-minute mastery technique that prepares them to work through any highimpact situation with confidence.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.6
EAN: 9780071401944
ISBN: 0071401946
Label: McGraw-Hill
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2002-06-18
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Studio: McGraw-Hill


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SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Crucial Confrontations: Tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior
• Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (J-B Lencioni Series)
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Insightful
Comment: Everyone has to deal with difficult situations while interacting with people whether it be a difficult customer, a overzealous boss, or a conflict with a coworker. It is necessary to be able to deal with these types of situations with out losing your temper or making your work-life much more difficult and much less productive. Crucial Conversations is the perfect tool for anyone who has to deal with customers or coworkers for any amount of time. It gives you the basic tools to be able to manage maintaining your composure in difficult situations.

The advice in Crucial Conversations was given in an extremely engaging manner. The language was very conversational. I did not feel as if I was being preached or talked down to while reading this book as I think some self-help and instructional books have the tendency to do. The examples and stories illustrated their points sufficiently and in an engaging way. The stories also did not overwhelm. I sometimes find that there are too many and they overpower the message of the book. That was not the case with this one. The exercises were also very helpful and illustrated the points very well.

Crucial Conversations did have one minor flaw. I did find that sometimes the language became a bit cliché. It was not overly obvious and I feel that most self-help books fall victim to it.

I would recommend Crucial Conversations to anyone who works with people...simple as that because it's inevitable that a situation will arise where the tactics in this book will be extremely useful.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Mutual Purpose, Respect & Paths to Action
Comment: The territory "Crucial Conversations" covers is core to leadership development work with simple models, concepts, and examples to which most people can relate quite easily.

Helping people create a shared "pool of meaning," discover "mutual purpose," and be sensitive to ways that violate "mutual respect" all help deepen relationships.

However, I've seen more people deepen their capacity to empathize with others and see events and circumstances more objectively by working with the "Path to Action" model from Crucial Conversations. The authors talk about "retracing" a path to action (i.e., starting with an action and tracing it back to a feeling which can then be traced back to a story which can be traced back to the facts, or things anyone could see or hear).

The model looks like this:

See/Hear Facts --> Tell Story --> Feel --> Act

During breakdown, we're usually far more in touch with what happened (the actions and what bothers us about them) than with the process that preceded the breakdown.

By tracing our own path to action, we get in touch with the stories (perceptions) that repeatedly drive our feelings and recurring behavior. We can then choose to interpret the facts in new ways that lead to new actions. When we trace another's path to action, we can get in touch with how they are interpreting and feeling about a situation. I've found this to be a very powerful process to understand conflicting perspectives and help us get back into mutual purpose and mutual respect more easily.

As an aside, I've often asked clients to trace others' paths to action. One client dubbed this process the "Empathy Game" and confessed how easily she empathized with some people while others required quite a lot of conscious effort to understand and then empathize with.

I have recommended this practical book to many, many leaders. For those who don't like to read or lead busy lives of commuting, the audio version has been a helpful resource.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow what a good book
Comment: This is a great book and it was even entertaining my 16 year old used the skill set in it to talk me into buying him a muscle car. So good communication skills in Teenagers can become expensive for Dad.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great together
Comment: I bought Crucial Conversations along with Amazon's recommended pairing, Emotional Intelligence 2.0. I enjoyed both books immensely and recommend reading them together.

A crucial conversation, as opposed to a casual exchange, is a discussion between two or more people about tough issues where opinions vary, stakes are high, and emotions run strong. When a topic needs to be breached that could easily lead to disaster, such as approaching a boss who is breaking his or her own safety or quality policies, or critiquing a colleague's work, or talking to a team member who isn't keeping commitments, talking openly is a must, but can be very difficult.

The first technique that must be learned to master crucial conversations is a talent for dialogue. This is the free flow of meaning between two or more people. People who find a way to get all relevant information from themselves and others out in the open, write the authors, make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool, even ideas that at first glance raise eyebrows or appear at odds with their own beliefs. These people try hard to ensure that all ideas find their way into the forum; and as this "pool of shared meaning" grows, it helps people by exposing them to more accurate and relevant information so they can make better decisions - and when people share their ideas more freely, the increased time investment creates betterquality decisions.

The authors write that the skills that are needed to master high-stakes interactions are easy to spot and easy to learn. By organizing the lessons they have discovered from extensive research, they have created a set of tools that combines the philosophies, theories, models and skills that can help make crucial conversations more successful.

These tools begin with tips for understanding how we think about and prepare for problem situations. Creating conditions in yourself and others must be done to develop the path of least resistance. Next, people must learn the skills of talking, listening and acting together. The last part of the equation involves mastering the tools for talking when stakes are high.

As for Emotional Intelligence 2.0, it teaches you how to keep your cool during tough conversations (and anytime, really). The book includes an online test which you take to test your EQ before and after you've applied the strategies from the book. It's a great value with the test, as the authors' company sells it for $40 separately from the book.

Customer Rating:
Summary: disappointing!
Comment: I paid for the book but then received a message saying they didn't have it in stock & couldn't get it. This was very annoying, they shouldn't have it listed if this is the case. The money was refunded after awhile but it makes me hesitate to buy online through this site again.

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