Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (2 page)

Copyright © 2012 by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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We dedicate this book to
Louise, Celia, Bonnie, and Linda—

whose support is abundant,
whose love is nourishing,
and whose patience is just shy of infinite
.

And to our children

Christine, Rebecca, Taylor, Scott,
Aislinn, Cara, Seth, Samuel, Hyrum,
Amber, Megan, Chase, Hayley, Bryn,
Amber, Laura, Becca, Rachael, Benjamin,
Meridith, Lindsey, Kelley, Todd,
who have been a wonderful source of learning
.

F
OREWORD TO THE
S
ECOND
E
DITION

F
OREWORD TO THE
F
IRST
E
DITION

P
REFACE

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

C
H
. 1: What's a Crucial Conversation?
And Who Cares? 1

C
H
. 2: Mastering Crucial Conversations
The Power of Dialogue

C
H
. 3: Start with Heart
How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want

C
H
. 4: Learn to Look
How to Notice When Safety Is at Risk

C
H
. 5: Make It Safe
How to Make It Safe to Talk About Almost Anything

C
H
. 6: Master My Stories
How to Stay in Dialogue When You're Angry, Scared, or Hurt

C
H
. 7: STATE My Path
How to Speak Persuasively, Not Abrasively

C
H
. 8: Explore Others' Paths
How to Listen When Others Blow Up or Clam Up

C
H
. 9: Move to Action
How to Turn Crucial Conversations into Action and Results

C
H
. 10: Yeah, But
Advice for Tough Cases

C
H
. 11: Putting It All Together
Tools for Preparing and Learning

Afterword
What I've Learned About Crucial Conversations in the Past Ten Years

E
NDNOTES

I
NDEX

No one is more pleased than I am that as I write this, this important book is approaching two million copies in print. I learned a lot from this book ten years ago when the authors first sent me the manuscript. For years I have taught Habit 5: Seek First to Understand. But this book goes even broader and deeper into the fundamental principles of high-stakes communication. It deals with the whole dynamic of crucial conversations in a wonderfully comprehensive way. But even more important, it draws our attention to those defining moments that literally shape our lives, shape our relationships, and shape our world. And that's why this book deserves to take its place as one of the key thought leadership contributions of our time.

Furthermore, I am gratified at this book's influence, because I have known these four authors for many years. They are superior people, great teachers, and master trainers. They have created a remarkably synergistic team that has endured for over twenty years. That says a lot about their ability to have crucial conversations themselves. In addition, they have created a world-class organization, VitalSmarts, that has become an engine of leadership, relationship, and personal change material that has influenced many millions of lives around the world. The culture
of their organization is a stellar reflection of all they teach in this volume—and is evidence of the efficacy of these principles.

I write this with my best wishes that the work of this fine team will continue to influence the world for many years to come.

— Stephen R. Covey
July 2011

This is a breakthrough book. That is exactly how I saw it when I first read the manuscript. I so resonated with the importance, power, and timeliness of its message.

This book is an apt response to the wisdom of the great historian Arnold Toynbee, who said that you can pretty well summarize all of history—not only of society, but of institutions and of people—in four words:
Nothing fails like success
. In other words, when a challenge in life is met by a response that is equal to it, you have success. But when the challenge moves to a higher level, the old, once successful response no longer works—it fails; thus, nothing fails like success.

The challenge has noticeably changed our lives, our families, and our organizations. Just as the world is changing at frightening speed and has become increasingly and profoundly interdependent with marvelous and dangerous technologies, so, too, have the stresses and pressures we all experience increased exponentially. This charged atmosphere makes it all the more imperative that we nourish our relationships and develop tools, skills, and enhanced capacity to find new and better solutions to our problems.

These newer, better solutions will not represent “my way” or “your way”—they will represent “our way.” In short, the solutions must be synergistic, meaning that the whole is greater than
the sum of the parts. Such synergy may manifest itself in a better decision, a better relationship, a better decision-making process, increased commitment to implement decisions made, or a combination of two or more of these.

What you learn is that “crucial conversations”
transform
people and relationships. They are anything but
transacted
; they create an entirely new level of bonding. They produce what Buddhism calls “the middle way”—not a compromise between two opposites on a straight-line continuum, but a higher middle way, like the apex of a triangle. Because two or more people have created something new from genuine dialogue, bonding takes place, just like the bonding that takes place in a family or marriage when a new child is created. When you produce something with another person that is truly creative, it's one of the most powerful forms of bonding there is. In fact the bonding is so strong that you simply would not be disloyal in his or her
absence
, even if there were social pressure to join others in bad-mouthing.

The sequential development of the subject matter in this book is brilliant. It moves you from understanding the supernal power of dialogue, to clarifying what you really want to have happen and focusing on what actually is happening, to creating conditions of safety, to using self-awareness and self-knowledge. And finally, it moves you to learning how to achieve such a level of mutual understanding and creative synergy that people are emotionally connected to the conclusions reached and are emotionally willing and committed to effectively implementing them. In short, you move from creating the right mind- and heart-set to developing and utilizing the right skill-set.

In spite of the fact that I have spent many years writing and teaching similar ideas, I found myself being deeply influenced, motivated, and even inspired by this material—learning new ideas, going deeper into old ideas, seeing new applications, and broadening
my understanding. I've also learned how these new techniques, skills, and tools work together in enabling crucial conversations that truly create a break with the mediocrity or mistakes of the past. Most
breakthroughs
in life truly are “break-withs.”

When I first put my hands on this book, I was delighted to see that dear friends and colleagues had drawn on their entire lives and professional experiences to not only address a tremendously important topic, but also to do it in a way that is so accessible, so fun, so full of humor and illustration, so full of common sense and practicality. They show how to effectively blend and use both intellectual (I.Q.) and emotional intelligence (E.Q.) to enable crucial conversations.

I remember one of the authors having a crucial conversation with his professor in college. The professor felt that this student was neither paying the price in class nor living up to his potential. This student, my friend, listened carefully, restated the professor's concern, expressed appreciation for the professor's affirmation of his potential, and then smilingly and calmly said, “My focus is on other priorities, and the class is just not that important to me at this time. I hope you can understand.” The teacher was taken aback, but then started to listen. A dialogue took place, new understanding was achieved, and the bonding was deepened.

I know these authors to be outstanding individuals and remarkable teachers and consultants, and have even seen them work their magic in training seminars—but I didn't know if they could take this complex topic and fit it into a book. They did. I encourage you to really dig into this material, to pause and think deeply about each part and how the parts are sequenced. Then apply what you've learned, go back to the book again, learn some more, and apply your new learnings. Remember, to
know
and not to
do
is really not to know.

I think you'll discover, as have I, that crucial conversations, as powerfully described in this book, reflect the insight of this excerpt of Robert Frost's beautiful and memorable poem, “The Road Not Taken”:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; . . .

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by
,

And that has made all the difference
.

— Stephen R. Covey

When we published
Crucial Conversations
in 2002, we made a bold claim. We argued that the root cause of many—if not most—human problems lies in how people behave when others disagree with them about high-stakes, emotional issues. We suggested that dramatic improvements in organizational performance were possible if people learned the skills routinely practiced by those who have found a way to master these high-stakes, “crucial” moments.

If anything, our conviction in this principle has grown in the subsequent decade. A growing body of research evidence shows that when leaders invest in creating a Crucial Conversations culture, nuclear power plants are safer, financial services firms gain greater customer loyalty, hospitals save more lives, government organizations deliver dramatically improved service, and tech firms learn to function seamlessly across international boundaries.

But we'd be less than honest if we didn't admit that the most gratifying results we've experienced over the past ten years have not come through research numbers, but through the thousands of stories told by courageous and skillful readers who have used these ideas to influence change when it mattered the most. One of the first was a woman who reunited with her estranged father after reading the book. A nurse described how she saved a patient's life by stepping up to a crucial conversation with a
defensive doctor who was misreading the patient's symptoms. One man masterfully avoided a rift with siblings over a will that threatened to tear the family apart after their father's death. One intrepid reader even credits her Crucial Conversations training with helping save her life during a carjacking in Brazil.