Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

So keep listening, and see just how fast a simple chat can become a "crucial conversation"; take a refreshing dip into what the authors call the "pool of shared meaning"; and learn how the stories we tell ourselves can adversely affect our interactions.

In the opening chapter, the authors define "crucial conversations" and argue that mastering them is an important and even central life skill.

To them, a "crucial conversation" is any discussion with high stakes, conflicting opinions, and strong emotions. Such interactions are not the sole province of presidents, prime ministers, and emperors. Rather, they're the stuff of everyday life – they happen frequently at home, at the office, and among friends.

Often, they happen without warning. Say you and a co-worker are calmly discussing an important recent presentation you did together. "I think it went rather well," you say. And your colleague replies, "You would think that, given that you always grab all the credit for our ideas." Suddenly, a casual conversation has turned crucial. Your co-worker thinks you hoard credit, and his frustration has bubbled over into an awkward accusation.

What do you do? You essentially have three choices, according to the authors. You can avoid the issue and allow it to fester – almost guaranteeing a more tense discussion later. Or you can hit back with an equally emotionally charged response like, "I deserve all the credit, given all the deadweight I put up with." Finally, you can negotiate the situation calmly, steering the conversation toward an honest, respectful discussion of the issues.

Unfortunately, the first two scenarios – avoidance, and emotionally charged response – are by far the most common, the authors write. Why? They offer a biological explanation. When we feel attacked, our bodies prepare us to flee or respond in kind – the "fight or flight" instinct. When a co-worker hits us with an accusation out of the blue, our bodies react much like our ancestors' bodies did when a wild animal surprised them on the savanna: We get a heavy dose of adrenalin, which gives us energy either to run like the wind, or fight to the end. Unfortunately, this diverts blood from our brains and takes it to our limbs. And so conversations tend to spiral out of control, and we say things we come to regret or rhetorically flee, leaving tensions to mount in our wake.

In the next chapter, the authors sketch out their strategy for avoiding these undesirable outcomes. What's the goal? In short, to get away from a win-lose mentality that makes us steer conversations to suit our own interests. Here, the authors are after something a little different – and in the long term, probably richer and more satisfying. They want us to guide crucial conversations into genuine dialogs, in which every party feels heard, respected, and understood.

The authors define dialog as the "free flow of meaning between two or more people." In a crucial conversation gone wrong, meaning gets blocked up, as people cling to their vastly different interpretations of events. Let's go back to our earlier example: Your co-worker feels as though you grab all the credit, while you feel like you do all the work. If we allow these interpretations to guide our crucial conversation, dialog will likely screech to a halt, as each party ups the rhetorical ante. You and your co-worker aggressively compete to impose an interpretation – that is, a meaning – on the situation. Rather than flow freely, meaning becomes contentious. A crucial conversation has spun out of control, and workplace co-operation has evaporated, to no one's advantage and to the detriment of the team.

But if you go into a crucial conversation with the goal of creating a genuine dialog, the result can be much more beneficial. Back to the awkward exchange with the co-worker. You say you thought the meeting went well, he replies that you would think so, considering that you grabbed all the credit for the ideas. Rather than respond defensively – "I should get the credit, because I do all the work" – try starting a genuine dialog. "I had no idea you felt that way. What makes you think I grab all the credit?"

Your co-worker responds that he feels you dominate presentations. You acknowledge that he might have a valid point, and carefully add your perspective: that when preparing for presentations, he's often too busy with other tasks to participate much, and thus you do the bulk of the preparation work.

In this scenario, meaning moves smoothly back and forth in the conversation, and rather than competing directly to impose a single interpretation – you hoard credit, your co-worker is a slacker – you can begin to cooperate on a solution to the underlying problem.

According to the authors, such dialogs create a "pool of shared meaning" – and gliding through it is certainly more productive than getting jostled about in the rough sea of open conflict – or for that matter, slogging across the barren plain of avoidance.

But how do we find our way to the "pool of shared meaning," when we're biologically wired to flee or fight when confronted with tense situations? The authors begin offering specific advice in the next chapter.

The important takeaway is this: you can't control other people's communication styles, but you can, with effort, control your own. And if you consciously seek real dialog, you'll likely find that people respond well when offered other options besides fight or flight.

As the authors put it, "start with a heart." In other words, when an argument rears up, be the bigger person. Step back, take a breath, and think. No matter how abruptly or unfairly you've been confronted, responding in kind will almost never produce a desirable result; and neither will any sort of avoidance strategy.

The first thing to do is think hard about what you really want. Often, your real desire in a situation is quite different from the burning need to win an argument. Take our earlier example – the snide remark of a colleague about your alleged need to take credit in presentations. How do you really want the conversation to end – with him "put in his place" and admitting that yes, you deserve most of the credit?

But even in the unlikely event of achieving that outcome, what will you have really won? In all likelihood, the situation will remain stagnant, with you doing most of the work. It may turn out that what you really want is for him to pull his own weight, to accept more of the workload. With that goal in mind, you can steer the dialog to the question of how he might find more time for preparation work.

But that, of course, will require you to rise above the urge to take his bait. Faced with such situations, the authors suggest taking a deep breath and asking yourself four questions: What do I really want for myself? What do I really want for others? What do I want for the relationship? Finally, how would I behave if I really wanted those results?

The answer to the final question is the crucial one. If you want your co-worker to devote more time to preparing for your shared presentations, do you really want to strike back by implying that he's lazy? As you heard a few minutes ago, a more effective strategy would be to draw him out about precisely why he feels like you hog credit, and then gently and respectfully present your own concerns.

But if gracefully maneuvering through crucial conversations means carefully monitoring your own behavior, it also means keeping a close eye on the behavior of other people. The authors take up this skill in the next chapter. The key is being tuned in to how you're coming across to others. Let's look again at the scenario involving the co-worker who confronts you for "hoarding credit" after an important presentation. The casual remark that "I thought it went rather well" abruptly prompted the man to air his grievance.

Before that point, if you'd been watching carefully, you might have noticed his increasing agitation after presentations. The clues may well have been non-verbal. You might have left a presentation jolly after your success, and noted that he seemed serious and withdrawn.

He may have looked away when you spoke in the hallway after the presentation, and then enthusiastically greeted someone else who passed by.

Reading those signals might have prompted you to carefully initiate a crucial conversation, rather than finding yourself blind-sided by one. While discussing the presentation with him afterward, you might have skipped the "well that went rather well" bit that so inflamed him. A better tack might have been, "I couldn't help but note that the boss mentioned my name, but not yours, when he praised our presentation. Did you find that upsetting?"

Now you're getting straight to the heart of the matter, in a way that honors his point of view. There's plenty of room for real, productive dialog, so long as you remember to keep in mind what you really want: presumably, a harmonious workplace, in which everyone pulls their weight and gets their due. The key is to be attentive to cues, even non-verbal ones.

The next chapter builds on that theme. It's about how to "make it safe" to talk about sensitive topics. The authors note that crucial conversations typically go sour when one or more parties don't feel "safe" – that is, they feel themselves vulnerable and their fear controls their reactions. They've accepted what the author's call the "sucker's choice" – the idea that their only two options are to lash out or bite their tongue.

When you're in a tense conversation with someone who doesn't feel safe, it's very much in your interest to try to restore a sense of safety. How to do so? According to the authors, people feel unsafe when they feel like they're not being heard, that their viewpoint isn't being given proper consideration.

So when the person you're talking with begins either lashing out or withdrawing, the wise course is to step back and really try to draw out their viewpoint.

This means ignoring any spiteful comments that emerge along with their opinion. But it doesn't mean bending to their will or caving in. Rather, you listen carefully and respectfully, and if necessary repeat their viewpoint in your own words, to confirm that you understand it correctly. If you do so with the genuine intention of understanding the other person's viewpoint, you stand an excellent chance of restoring a sense of safety – and of getting the conversation back on a productive track. You're much more likely to find a sympathetic listener to your own viewpoint, and come up with a course of action acceptable to both parties.

Having laid the groundwork for their technique, the authors then turn to fine-tuning and broadening it. The next chapter focuses on the stories we tell ourselves, and how those stories affect our crucial conversations. According to the authors, people explain the world to themselves through stories – and these stories determine how we interpret events and interact with other people. The problem is that we often base our stories on faulty assumptions, and escalate minor conflicts into huge battles.

During crucial conversations, the key is to separate stories from facts – and then stick to the facts as much as possible. Here's an example. Say your boss takes you off a key project, and doesn't immediately explain why. Your mind leaps into action. He must be dissatisfied with your work. That trivial error you made last week – well, it must not have been so trivial after all. A story begins to form – one that ends with you being fired.

Confronting your boss with that story would, of course, be foolish. But it would be equally foolish to avoid the topic and let your anxiety build. Ask yourself: What are the facts here? Your boss has taken you off the project. That's all you really know. It would be perfectly wise to request an appointment with your boss, and calmly say something like, "I was surprised to be taken off Project X. Would you mind giving some feedback as to why?"

Sure, it wouldn't be easy, and you would be taking the risk of initiating a crucial conversation with a superior. But the conversation would have plenty of potential to generate real dialog, and you'd likely leave with a real idea of what caused the change. If your performance had been sub-par, you stand an excellent chance of coming up with a plan for improvement. Or maybe you find out that the boss relieved you of that duty because he had other, grander plans for you.

Either way, you will have avoided the embarrassing temptation to blurt out, "I realize I've failed – would you mind telling me when my last day is?" You'll also have spared yourself the grinding uncertainty of not knowing why you lost the project.

This book is generally about facing difficult issues as they arise, in a mature, rational way. The authors acknowledge that it's not easy. The final couple of chapters focus on how to deal with tough cases – when people cling to ineffective communication styles and turn crucial conversations into disasters, despite your best efforts to create real dialog.

More often than not, though, the techniques offered here seem primed to be infectious, delivering tools to keep communication lines open for a species conditioned to answer tense situations with a fight-or-flight reaction. To be frank, most of us could probably benefit from reading and heeding this book.

"Crucial Conversations" by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler is published in paperback by McGraw-Hill. That ends this episode of Book Insights.