Today I finished Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High. What I found most intriguing about the overall feel of this business/self-help book, is how most of the “tools” they mention are principles most people know in the back of their heads. Crucial Conversations puts these tacit understandings into comprehensible words, then delves deeper into mastering these principles that many people actually pick up on earlier in their lives.
The first questions Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler tackle is what defines a “crucial conversation”. The common perception of these interactions are between world leaders, CEOs and high level executives, in other words, people of importance. What the authors attempt to illustrate is that crucial conversations occur in everybody’s lives, regardless of what you do or who you are. Here are a 3 shared characteristics of all crucial conversations:
- Opposing views/opinions
- Emotions run high
- Stakes are high
Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler argue that two important keys to having crucial conversations is to have Mutual Respect and Mutual Purpose. Mutual Respect says it all in the name, but Mutual Purpose is recognizing [or creating] a common purpose that both people strive for in their conversation. One of the most common pitfalls in conversations is that we forget what we really want. Sometimes we get caught up in “winning”, or making the other person feel guilty, or justifying why we’re right, that we lose sight of our goals in holding a conversation with someone. In times like this, the authors argue that it is important to remember to Start With Heart, and collaborate with the other person to develop mutual purpose.
There were seven principles in the book. I’ll list them all but I will focus more on the ones that I believe I need to develop the most and will most benefit me in the future.
- Start With Heart
- Learn to Look
- Make it Safe
- Master My Stories
- STATE My Path
- Explore Other’s Paths
- Move to Action
I believe that chapter 4 and 5 are my biggest areas of improvement.
MASTER MY STORIES: What to do when we’re angry, hurt or upset
The question this chapter answers is what do you do when you’re angry, hurt or upset? How do we manage our emotions? Turns out emotions are not as spontaneous as they may appear to be. We actually have more control over our emotions than we may initially believe. Initially, we may appear to see something [the action], feel an emotion [feel], and act.
However, there’s a middle step we’re missing here. Observations of actions don’t elicit emotions. They are not directly related. Think about when someone laughs at you. Why do you sometimes laugh with them but other times take it offensively? It’s because of this middle step we’re missing in the chart, which is where our brains tell ourselves [so rapidly we don’t even consciously realize it] a story about what and why we’re seeing and hearing what we’re observing.
The chart above is frequently referred to in the book and is formally called The Path to Action. What we’ve essentially established here is that we need to master that middle step to assume the best in others and have more successful, result producing conversations. What happens when we don't Master our stories, is we tell ourselves a negative story about an observation we see or hear, which leads us to think poorly about the person they’re having a conversation with. And trust me, it is very difficult to have a conversation with someone whom we believe is harmful. There are three common types of stories that we tell ourselves. If we learn how to recognize when we tell these stories to ourselves, it will help us avoid telling them and think about more positive reasons.
The first most common story that people tell themselves is a Villain Story. We often tell the story when other people have inconvenienced us in some way, and we exaggerate what they have done to make them seem like the villain or the bad guy because they have inconvenienced us.
The second most common story that people tell themselves is a Victim Story. This story is most often told when we ourselves have made a mistake but attempt to exempt ourselves of responsibility by telling a story that makes it appear like the other person is being harmful and mean.
The third most common story that people tell themselves is the Helpless Story. I couldn’t have done anything else. however the truth is there's always something that could have been done. people who tell the helpless story often fall into the trap of what the authors like to call, Fool’s Choice, which is when we believe there are only 2 options. One, tell the truth and hurt a friend, or two, keeping the friend but a major issue is never identified.
The authors suggest asking ourselves this question when we find ourselves telling Victim, Villain or Helpless stories:
Why would a reasonable, rational and decent person do that?
This humanizes the other person and makes us more receptive to listening to their reasoning.
STATE My Path: How to share your ideas
STATE stands for:
Share the facts
Tell my story
Ask for Other’s opinions
Talk Tentatively
Encourage Testing
The first three tips hint at what to do when sharing your opinion, or confronting someone for the first time while the remaining two letters advise us on how to do it.
Starting a crucial conversation with facts is effective because it promotes Safety, which is the third tip on the list. Facts are neutral. They have neither accusations, nor assumptions, nor stories attached to them. Facts are facts and are hard to be denied.
Once the other person hears the facts, then you can open the conversation up to telling your story, or what you’ve gathered based on the facts. It is critical that you state the facts though first, so that the other person can see where your story is coming from. This also is very closely connected to the second letter T, which is talk tentatively. When sharing your story, talking tentatively shows that you’re open for correction. After all it is a story that you're telling and thus not a fact, so trying to avoid telling your story as if it were conclusive to make it safe for the other person to share their side of the story.
Asking for the other’s opinions is part of the last letter, E, encourage testing since it asks the other person to share what they meant. Asking for the other person’s opinion allows you to see how your story may be similar/different to what the other person’s real intent.
I recommend this book for anyone who’s willing to learn about ways to improve their ability to communicate. Crucial Conversations offers feasible tips to help readers state the truth without sugar coating it, while maintaining healthy relationships. Another quick, but returning read.
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