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Crucial Conversations

The Big Idea

The term ‘crucial conversation’ evokes images of great statesmen or men of consequence meeting and discussing issues that will shape the world. That sort of interaction is not the kind the authors of this book have in mind; they are concerned with the sort of interactions that happen to everyone.

Crucial conversations are defined as discussions between two people where stakes are high, opinions vary and emotions run strong. These are day-to-day occurrences that affect everyone’s lives – in many cases, these are pivotal conversations whose results may be extremely significant. An element of one’s daily routine could be forever altered, for better or for worse. Plus by dealing with even one conversation in a particular way, you determine a pattern of behavior that shows up in all subsequent conversations.

This book, then, is the authors’ stab at teaching others how to handle – and even master – crucial conversations, and by doing so change their lives.

What’s a Crucial Conversation?

A crucial conversation is a discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong.

People generally choose to at least try to handle this sort of situation as well as they possibly can. Most times, however, they don’t do very well at all, for several reasons.

• Physiologically, humans are designed to handle stressful situations with fists and feet (and the related hormones and physical reactions), not intelligence and attentiveness.
• Most often these sorts of situations come up spontaneously and out of nowhere, and many people cannot come up with more than a knee-jerk response to them.
• Many people simply don’t know where to start when dealing with these situations.

The consequences of either avoiding or messing up one’s crucial conversations can be quite severe, as every aspect of people’s lives can be affected, from the personal (relationships with loved ones, friends and co-members of interest groups, our health) to the professional (careers and the communities people belong). Learning how to face crucial conversations and how to handle them well is also learning how to influence just about every aspect of  people’s lives.

Mastering Crucial Conversations
The free flow of relevant information is central to every successful conversation. The key to success in conversing is being open and honest in expressing opinions, feelings and theories, willingly sharing views even when the ideas in question are controversial or unpopular. This free flow of meaning is known as dialogue.

How dialogue leads to success

• Each of us enters a conversation with different opinions, feelings, experiences, ideas and theories about the topic being discussed. This combination of thoughts and feelings makes up a personal ‘pool of meaning’.
• People skilled at dialogue try to make it safe for everyone conversing to bring their inputs out into the open – into a ‘shared pool’. As the ‘shared pool’ is added to, it grows.
• As this happens, people benefit: as they are exposed to more accurate and relevant information, they make better choices, and people also willingly act on whatever decisions they all make. The pool of shared meaning is the birthplace of synergy.

These dialogue skills are quite easy to spot and moderately easy to learn.

Start with Heart
Your own heart, that is. The first step to mastering dialogue is to gain an understanding of oneself. The first principle, therefore, is “Work on me first.”If you can’t get yourself right, you’ll have a hard time getting dialogue right.

One of the first steps to doing so is to understand that when faced with a failed conversation, you are far too quick to blame other people. Although in some instances you really are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, this is rarely the case; more often that not, people do something that contributes to the trouble they experience.

People who are best at dialogue understand not only this simple fact, but also realize that they’re the only person they can work on anyway – the only person you can continually prod and shape (with any degree of success at any rate) is the one you see in the mirror.