Review: Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Stephen R. Covey, Joseph Grenny, et al

For some reason, this is categorized as a business book, has a business book intro, and uses a business book writing style… Even though the content is applicable to all contexts, and not just business. If you can get past the mechanical, cookie cutter intro, you’ll find that there are a number of valuable lessons within. The focus is on how to better handle “crucial conversations”: that is, those where emotions and stakes are high (e.g., difficult conversations with your kids, spouse, employees, boss, etc).

Some of the key takeaways for me:

• Pools of meaning: Everyone enters a conversation with their own opinions, theories, and experiences—their personal pool off meaning. To be able to communicate effectively and make informed decisions, you need to get all the relevant information out onto the table—a shared pool of meaning. Key insight: people will only contribute to the shared pool of meaning if they feel safe.

• Safety: you can only have a good conversation if everyone involved feels safe. When you don’t feel safe, you enter a fight or flight mode, which in conversations often expresses itself as silence (you go quiet, stop participating, clam up, or avoid the issue entirely) or violence (you get loud, start arguing, turn to insults), and prevents any meaningful progress from happening. Key insight: learn to notice when other people in the conversation don’t feel safe. You’ll see it in their verbal and body language. When this happens, pause, call it out explicitly, and acknowledge that you are committed to finding a solution, but you need to do something different to re-establish safety.

• Mutual purpose: you can’t have a good conversation without a mutual purpose. If the other party thinks you are purely pushing for your own selfish needs, the conversation likely won’t go well. Sometimes, you’ll need to make an effort to find a mutual purpose. For example, instead of just, “I want a raise,” perhaps try to approach the conversation as, “I want a raise so instead of worrying if I could get a bigger salary elsewhere, I can focus on my work, and be more productive.” Once you’ve figured out a mutual purpose, call it out explicitly during the conversation, as that helps build the shared pool of meaning.

• Mutual respect: if the other party in the conversation doesn’t feel like you respect them, they will end up spending all their energy defending themselves, rather than moving the conversation forward. You don’t have to agree with the other party, but you always need to make it explicit that you respect their opinions and want them to contribute to the shared pool of meaning. If you said something insulting, you have to apologize; the conversation won’t move forward until you do, no matter how “right” you were.

• Solutions: when there is a conflict over how to solve a problem, it’s critical that everyone believes that it’s possible to come up with an alternate solution that isn’t the one they have in mind, but still meets their needs. Note that this is not about compromise! Most of us have been taught that with conflict, you compromise by having each party give something up and meet in the middle, but this often produces a solution that doesn’t make anyone happy. Instead, you can find a better solution that meets everyones needs by learning to differentiate the underlying needs from what each party is asking for. The thing you’re asking for is typically just one strategy to meet a need—and other strategies are possible! For example, imagine a husband says, “I want to go into the city and watch a movie,” and the wife says, “Oh, the city is too loud; let’s stay home and watch a movie.” A crappy approach is to “compromise” by, say, driving halfway to the city and watching a movie. A better approach is to dig into the underlying needs: for example, it may turn out that what the husband actually wanted was to get out of the house, whereas what the wife actually wanted was some quiet time with her husband. Watching a movie in the city or at home were just two possible strategies to meet those needs; but once you understand what the needs are, you can come up with alternatives that fully meet both needs, such as going on a hike near the house.

• Communicating persuasively: STATE.

  • Start with the facts. Not your conclusions about those facts! Just the raw information.
  • Tell your story. Now explain how you interpret those facts.
  • Ask others for their views. You want the other person to share their facts and stories.
  • Talk tentatively. When telling your story, make it clear it’s just that—a story, and not the absolute truth.
  • Encourage testing. Invite opposing views. Actively ask for feedback. Sometimes, you may even have to play devil’s advocate and express opposing views to your own story to encourage others to chime in.

• Be humble: the goal of STATE is not to prove you’re right but to help others see what you’re seeing and to contribute to the shared pool of meaning. The “tentative” part is especially important, as you want others to contribute to the pool too! Note that you can hold your views and beliefs very strongly, but if you want to have a productive conversation, the way you assert those views and beliefs should be tentative.

• Dealing with silence or violence: if someone doesn’t feel safe, they may go into a “silence or violence” reaction. Here’s a way to try to recover from that and restore safety:

  • Ask: encourage the person to share what they are thinking. Ask them what they want to happen.
  • Mirror: mimic their tone/mood to show empathy.
  • Paraphrase: repeat back what you heard in your own words to check your understanding.
  • Back off: Don’t push to hard. Sometimes, you just need to back off and try again later.
  • Prime: sometimes, if totally stuck, toss your own guess as to what the person is thinking—to encourage them to correct you.
  • Agree. Most people are in violent agreement on 90% of issues. Start by pointing out that you agree on most of the issues, and build on that.
  • Compare paths. For the parts where you don’t agree, don’t tell the other person they are “wrong,” but merely that you have a different conclusion. Use STATE to present the path you took to your conclusion.

Rating: 5 stars