Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High - by Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny
Date read: 2016-09-14How strongly I recommend it: 8/10
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Teaches you how to identify, prep and conduct crucial conversations in both personal and professional settings.
Contents:
My Notes
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." -George Bernard Shaw
Dialogue - find a way to get all relevant information (from themeselves and others) out into the open.
Pool of Shared Meaning - people who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool - even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs.
The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy.
Fix the problem of believing that others are the source of all that ails us. The best way to work on "us" is to start with "me."
As much as others may need to change, the only person we can continually inspire, prod, and shape is the person in the mirror.
Skilled people begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens. They're steeply eyed smart when it comes to knowing what they want.
When you find yourself moving toward silence or violence, stop and pay attention to your motives.
Don't make a Fool's Choice - choosing between either/or choices. To avoid this:
- Clarify what you really want
- Clarify what you really don't want
- Present your brain with a more complex problem - combine 1 & 2 into an "and" question that forces you to search for more creative and productive options than silence or violence
- Winning
- Punishing - as our anger increases, we move from wanting to win the point to wanting to harm the other person
- Keeping the Peace - rather than add to the pool of meaning, we go to silence
Ask yourself: "What am I doing, and if I had to guess, what does it tell me about my underlying motives?"
When you name the game, you can stop playing it.
Ask these questions when you find yourself slipping out of dialogue:
- What do I really want for myself?
- What do I really want for others?
- What do I really want for the relationship?
Watch the content of the conversation (the "what") along with the conditions (the "why").
To spot crucial conversations:
- Notice physical signals - stomach gets tight or eyes get dry
- Notice emotions - scared, hurt, or angry
- Notice their behavior - raising their voice or becoming very quiet
People become defensive when they no longer feel safe. You start to go blind.
The 3 most common forms of silence are:
- Masking - understanding or selectively showing our true opinions. Sarcasm, sugarcoating, and couching
- Avoiding - involves steering completely away from sensitive subjects
- Withdrawing - pulling out of a conversation altogether
- Controlling - coercing others to your way of thinking. Cutting others off, overstating your facts, speaking in absolutes
- Labeling - putting a label on people or ideas so we can dismiss them under a general stereotype or category
- Attacking - belittling and threatening
Step out of the content of the conversation, make it safe, and then step back in.
Conditions of safety include:
Mutual Purpose - others perceive that you're working toward a common outcome in the conversation, that you care about their goals, interests, and values.
Signs of mutual purpose at risk: we end up in debate, defensiveness, hidden agendas, accusations, and circling back to the same topic.
Ask yourself:
- Do others believe I care about their goals in this conversation?
- Do they trust my motives?
Respect is like air, as long as it's present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it's all that people can think about.
Signs of mutual respect at risk: pouting, name-calling and yelling.
Instead of focusing how we are different from others, look for ways you are similar.
When we recognize that we all have weaknesses, it's easier to find a way to respect others.
Apologize when you've made a mistake that has hurt others. Start with an apology.
When others misinterpret either your purpose or your intent, use Contrasting (don't/do satement) that addresses others' concerns that you don't respect them or that you have a malicious purpose (the don't part). It also confirms your respect or clarifies your real purpose (the do part). For example:
[The don't part] "The last thing I wanted to do was communicate that I don't value the work you put in or that I don't want to share it with the VP.
[The do part] I think your work has been nothing short of spectacular."
Contrasting is not apologizing. It's ensuring that what we said didn't hurt more than it should have.
When we're aware that something we're about to drop into the pool of meaning could create a splash of defensiveness, we use Contrasting to bolster safety.
Use the acronym CRIB: Commit, Recognize, Invent, Brainstorm:
- Commit to seek mutual purpose - start with the heart and agree to agree. Example: "It seems like we're both trying to force our view on each other. I commit to stay in this discussion until we have a solution that satifies both of us."
- Recognize the purpose behind the strategy - before we can agree on a Mutual Purpose, you must first know what people's real purposes are (ask why?). Step out of the content of the conversation and explore the purpose behind them.
- Invent a mutual purpose - by focusing on higher and longer-term goals, you often find ways to transcend short-term compromise, build Mutual Purpose, and return to dialogue
- Brainstorm new stratgies.
Others don't make you mad. You make you mad.
When it comes to strong emotions, you either find a way to master them or fall hostage to them.
If we can find a way to control the stories we tell, by rethinking or retelling them, we can master our emotions and, therefore, master our crucial conversations.
To fix your story telling process, retrace your path to action:
[Act] Notice your behavior. Ask: Am I in some form of silence or violence?
[Feel] Get in touch with your feelings. What emotions are encouraging me to act this way?
[Tell story] Analyze your stores. What story is creating these emotions?
[See/hear] Get back to the facts. What evidence do I have to support this story?
It's important to get in touch with your feelings, and to do so, you may want to expand your emotional vocabulary.
Don't confuse stories with facts by focusing on behavior. Can you see or hear this thing you're calling a fact? Was it an actual behavior?
Spot the story by watching for "hot" words (aka judgemental words).
Victim Stories make us out to be innocent sufferers, when we make a mistake claiming our intentions were innocent and pure.
We tell Villian Stories when others do things that hurt or inconvenience us, where we invent terrible motives or exaggerate flaws for others based on how their actions affected us.
Helpless Stories - "There's nothing else I can do."
A useful story creates emotions that lead to healthy action - such as dialogue.
Turn victims into actors: Am I pretending not to notice my role in the problem?
Turn villians into humans: Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?
Turn the helpless into the able: What do I really want? For me? For others? For the relationship? What would I do right now if I really wanted these results?
Have the confidence to say what needs to be said to the person who needs to hear it.
Be humble enough to realize that you don't have a monopoly on the truth nor do you always have to win their way.
Use STATE to help you talk about sensitive topics:
- Share your facts - they are the least controversial, the most persuasive and the least insulting
- Tell your story - it takes confidence, if you've done your homework by thinking through the facts behind your story, you'll realize that you are drawing a reasonable, rational, and decent conclusion. If people start becoming defensive, step out of the conversation and rebuild safety by Contrasting.
- Ask for others' paths - once you've shared your point of view, invite others to do the same. Be willing to abandon or reshape your story as more information pours into the Pool of Shared Meaning.
- Talk tentatively - tell your story as a story rather than disguising it as a hard fact. Examples: "In my opinion" or "I'm beginning to wonder if." Use language that says you're sharing an opinion.
- Encourage testing -invite opposing views. Examples: "Does anyone see it differently?" or "What am I missing hear?" or "I'd really like to hear the other side of this story." Dont' turn an invitation into a veiled threat. Play devil's advocate by disagreeing with your own view. You can argue as vigorously as you want for your point of view, provided you are even more vigorous at encouraging others to disprove it.
Be sincere - when you do invite people to share their views, you must mean it.
When most people become furious, we need to become curious by asking: "Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person say this?"
Power listening tool: AMPP: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime
- Ask to get things rolling: "I'd really like to hear your opinion on this."
- Mirror to confirm feelings - describe how they look or act: "You say you're okay, but by the tone of your voice, you seem upset."
- Paraphrase to acknowledge the story - remain calm and collected and ask what he/she wants to see happen. Engage their brains in a way that moves to problem solving and away from either attacking or avoiding.
- Prime when you're getting nowhere - offer your best guess at what the other person is thinking or feeling. Pour some meaning into the pool before the other person will respond in kind.
- Agree - if you completely agree with the other person's path, say so and move on. Don't turn an agreement into an argument.
- Build - if information is incomplete, point out areas of agreement, and then add elements that were left out of the discussion
- Compare - compare your path with the other person's: "I think I see things differently. Let me describe how."
Separate dialogue from decision making. Make it clear how decisions will be made - who will be involved and why.
Deciding what decisions to turn over and when to do it is part of their stewardship.
When the line of authority isn't clear, use your best dialogue skills to get meaning into the pool. Jointly decide how to decide.
Four methods of decision making are: Command, Consult, Vote, Consensus.
- Command - it's not our job to decide what to do. It's our job to decide how to make it work.
- Consult - an efficient way of gaining ideas and support without bogging down the decision making process. Gather ideas, evaluate options, make a choice, and then inform the broader population.
- Vote - best suited where efficiency is the highest value
- Consensus - talk until everyone honestly agrees to one decision. Should only be used with 1) high-stakes and complex issues or 2) issues where everyone absolutely must support the final choice.
- Who cares? - don't involve people who don't care
- Who knows? - try not to involve people who contribute no new information
- Who must agree?
- How many people is it worth involving? - your goal should e to involve the fewest number of people while still considering the quality of the decision along with the support that people will give it
- Who - there is no "we." Assign a name to every responsibility.
- What - be sure to spell out the exact deliverables you have in mind. To help clarify, use Contrasting.
- When - goals without deadlines aren't goals, they're merely directions
- Follow up - build an expectation for follow-up into every assignment