Customer Reviews

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When I obtained a copy of Crucial Conversations, I had very high expectations of this book having read the authors' outstanding earlier work, The Balancing Act. I must say I wasn't disappointed; in fact, I was delighted! Crucial Conversations is an extremely insightful and very practical book. Indeed, it is a very rare combination to find a book that contains profound ideas as well as provides actionable tools and Crucial Conversations delivers both.

The book addresses a topic that is largely misunderstood and vastly underestimated: high stakes dialogue. The authors define crucial conversations as those where 1) stakes are high, 2) opinions vary, and 3) emotions run strong, or in other words, much of both our professional and personal lives. We're all involved in crucial conversations at home and at work but most of us are not very aware of the interpersonal dynamics at play and/or we're unskilled in how to respond differently. The book helps the reader first understand the principles involved in "crucial conversations" but then also helps the reader develop real skills and abilities to choose or change their communication patterns. The end result is remarkable. The book's impact is a much bigger idea than simple communication--it's all about effective human interaction and getting results with and through people.

The book is highly readable, extremely engaging and actually quite fun. It is filled with illustrations and stories from all walks of life: business examples, personal examples and family examples. The fact that the principles and skills the authors teach can be applied in all dimensions of life--work, home, personal--is very appealing to me and made the book extremely helpful on many fronts.

I benefitted most from this book from a business standpoint and have found that applying these skills has made a real difference at work. I'm more courageous and more considerate at the same time. I understand people better but I especially understand myself better. I'm far more conscious and aware of my dialogue with others and I've greatly improved my skills and abilities to lead effectively. The bottom line is, I'm helping my company get better results and I'm far more effective personally. If more people in business were to apply these principles and skills in the frequent crucial conversations they have at work, they would make better decisions, achieve better results and do it all in a way that would build the trust and strengthen relationships. I couldn't give a book higher marks. Outstanding!

I bought this book after I heard Dr. Glickman, the author of Optimal Thinking-How To Be Your Best Self, recommend it during an Optimal Thinking seminar. When I read that Dr. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, recommended this book too I knew that this was going to be a life-changing book for me. I was right. This book has given me a formula for handling myself and others correctly during tough interactions. I am embarrassed to admit that I sometimes yelled and degraded people when I did not get what I wanted from them. Now I use optimal thinking to put my best self in charge, start with heart, look for safety problems, make it safe, retrace my path, and take the other steps recommended in this book. The steps are simple and clear. I am not perfect at them yet, and might never be, but I have already come a long way. You can't go wrong with this book, so press the "Buy" button right now, and if you want to optimize your effectiveness in all areas of life, buy the other books I mentioned.

What is a crucial conversation?

According to the authors, opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. This can involve ending a relationship, asking a friend to repay a loan, giving the boss feedback about bad behavior, critiquing a colleague's work, or giving an unfavorable performance review.

You have three choices about such conversations. You can avoid the conversations, face them poorly, or face them well.

This book focuses on the last, providing practical advice about how to keep your own cool while encouraging everyone else to do she same. You can save a lot of time in reading and understanding the book if you look at figures 10-1 through 10-4 beginning on page 182 before you get very far. It's a helpful overview of the authors' point of view.

The book's strengths come in the authors' sympathy with those who have trouble holding such conversations, the many examples and advice on how to deal with difficult situations.

The book's main weakness comes in a desire to encapsulate the key lessons into ACRONYMS like STATE and ABCs. While they are nifty acronyms, I couldn't remember what they stood for by the next page. Something more visual at each stage would have helped me out.

I also think that the book would have benefited from more advice on how to be empathic with the other people involved.

But if you normally handle such situations by running the other way, screaming or slamming the door, this book will help you develop much more constructive habits that will leave you feeling better about yourself.

As a coach to both individuals and groups, I see the very costly problems in the workplace that result from the important conversations that are not occurring because they are too hard or scary. The cost includes harm to relationships, careers and the bottom line. Both executives and high performance teams have been derailed by not addressing the dead elephants in the room. Crucial Conversations is absolutely the best book on the subject of difficult and critical communication. The book is very well organized, presenting clear steps to create an environment in which the hard conversation can happen. There are so many tools in this book that if it were not so well organized and presented in stages, the reader would be overwhelmed. The authors handle this very well - you can tell there was experience and expertise in adult learning informing the structure of the book. Why my clients and I become so excited about the book is its immediate results. You can start using the concepts and skills before you have finished the book! The foundations of making the environment safe - even for someone you may not like or respect is particularly effective. I have been very pleased with the results I have experienced - as well as my clients. Every leader should have this book on their bookshelf!

A bonus to readers is the continued support from the authors on their website described in the book. There is a wealth of additional information, interactive reviews, assessments and even video vignettes that illustrate the learning points with relevance and humor. For those truly smitten, there are training courses available to assist in obtaining personal mastery or even to teach the material if desired. I recommend this book and Primal Leadership to top-level executives in the federal government and private sector. I, and they, have never been disappointed at the difference it has made. Enjoy!

Wanna argue? Nope. Then you need Kerry Patterson and his co-writers, who describe techniques for effective negotiation and conflict resolution in the context of important, potentially life-changing conversations. Examples include talking yourself into a promotion, bringing up important information at meetings and working out problems with your spouse. Some tips will sound familiar, such as knowing what you really want and being open to alternatives. However, the book also highlights some themes that are often forgotten in negotiations, such as making it safe for others to express their true feelings and desires. The authors explain how to avoid getting forced into false either-or choices and tell you how to remain alert for unstated alternatives or possibilities. This lively book includes many examples drawn from business and personal relationships. We recommend it in particular to those are new to negotiations and conflict resolution, though it teaches solid skills that any manager - or any marriage partner, for that matter - could benefit from mastering.

This book was a most enjoyable read but left me with a touch of ambivalence. As a handbook for communicating more effectively, it's helpful but perhaps a bit simplistic.

"Crucial conversations" are defined as those in which opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. The book targets situations in business and personal life, and is extremely readable with its many illustrative dialogues from both sectors. An extensive vocabulary is introduced and I've had some of the terms floating like a ghostly subtext under my own conversations: Sucker's Choice; Safety; Salute and Stay Mute; Silence or Violence; Freeze Your Lover; Pool of Shared Meaning. It's all useful even if reductionist.

The techniques offered for effective negotiation are generally quite obvious, yet they bear repeating and codifying. They are, however, techniques, and as such they probably won't give earth-shaking results without an understanding of what's making people tick. Conversation and negotiation are so much more than technique.

CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS is an ideal offering for the best-seller market and would be a great springboard for leadership development workshops.

My two picks for the best advice in this book:

(1) Stay focused on what you really want.
(2) If you give this book to a partner or business associate, don't take a yellow highlighter to the parts you think they need before you give it; better to work on your own side of the crucial conversations.

Linda Bulger, 2008

More than just good advice, this book walked me through how to get unstuck in my personal life and at work. I learned how to step up to and handle well a few tough subjects that I'd avoided for years. Now, my relationships at home and at work have improved--and I'm getting better results. Thanks so much for writing this book!

It's readable, makes sense, and offers valuable insights. It, and Susan Scott's <Fierce Conversations> are, in my opinion, the two best books available in this venue.

I bought this book after undergoing a first, miserable mediation session with my soon-to-be-exhusband. The stakes are high--it's our property settlement, and my husband had been cashing out the savings and spending them, while leaving me to take care of the 2 mortgages and other obligations. It was easy, but not very productive, to point out where I felt he was wrong.

I started reading Crucial Conversations and using the tools as well as I could, while watching our mediator model them. I stopped participating in the accuse/counter-accuse game, and focused on bringing information to the table, while I used the crucial conversation tools to keep our discussions productive.

The book starts out with a self-assessment to determine your own communications strengths and weaknesses.

My biggest faux-pas with my husband was to cause Respect violations. The CC tools gave me a usable set of actions to take to set things back on track:
* Apologize (I'm sorry if that sounded disrespectful.)
* Contrast (I don't want to make you out to be the bad guy, I'm just concerned that I won't have any funds left to cover the emergencies.)
* CRIB
- Commit to seek mutual purpose (I'll stay in this process as long as it takes for us to reach agreement.)
- Recognize the purpose behind his strategy (It's understandable that you're unhappy with our situation and that you're trying to do something to feel better.)
- Invent a mutual purpose (I want us both to be happy and secure after the divorce.)
- Brainstorm new strategies (Maybe we can just focus on the numbers for now, and put off worrying about how we're going to divide things until later.

Using these tools has kept the dialogue moving forward, and we're very close to agreement, after just two more sessions.

The Crucial Conversations tools won't change another person who's determined to be unreasonable into a perfectly cooperative person, but they will give you a sane way to stay in dialogue and still hold the other person accountable for his or her own irrational attitudes and behavior.

I think this book is a must-have for anyone who has had a hard time dealing with conflict. I'll be reaching for it again, I know.

Most books deliver well on the "what." Crucial Conversations delivers on the "how." Those "how to skills" are helping my direct reports and me change the culture of our division. More importantly, it is helping me to generate useful techniques that I can use at work, at home, and during my volunteer work with community service organizations. It has assisted me in identifying what I really want as I dialog with others and lays out the necessary steps to achieve my outcome(s) while maintaining good and positive human relationships.

This book is a "must read" for organizational personnel and individuals who have become casual communicators in high stakes conversations, thus missing out on valuable and collaborative resolutions to problems, assisting in negatively labeling others, and settling on mediocre business and personal relationships.