Crucial Conversations: Key Insights for Navigating Tough Talks
Practical Takeaways for Your Most Challenging Conversations
Few skills will help your professional and personal lives like getting better at tough conversations. Unless you’re a hermit, you will be dealing, and often disagreeing, with other humans. How well you handle those arguments can be the difference between a fight and a close working relationship.
The authors of Crucial Conversations (a team of consultants who help business managers get better at having difficult conversations) have developed a huge toolbox to help you be better at tough disagreements.
Honest or kind. Choose both.
You can have a strong disagreement with another person and maintain a good relationship - it can even improve the relationship. Understanding this is one of the most important parts of learning to have productive disagreements.
Many grew up seeing disagreements lead to hurt feelings that were never resolved, so they believe that you can either disagree with someone or have a harmonious relationship, but not both. Crucial Conversations calls this ‘The Fool’s Choice’ (having a good relationship, or a disagreement, but not both). The book is all about how to respectfully and honestly disagree with someone so that you can be honest and kind - transforming a disagreement from a relationship ender to a relationship builder.
Keeping your eye on the conversation ball
Conversations rarely go as planned. It’s easy for difficult discussions to drift towards the wrong subject - often an easier, less emotionally laden subject.
You need to be able to have a tough conversation about the right subject and be able to stay on that subject. Asking yourself what your long-term goal is can do that. All of us have been selfish or small when arguing with someone, but asking yourself what you want in the long-run can short-circuit that selfish tendency and help you stay away from having a disagreement that hurts your relationship. Knowing what you want long-term can also help you see when the conversation is veering away from that goal.
Another powerful tool is go into a conversation with the elevator pitch of what you want to talk about. “I’ve noticed that Conner is ending up with the best assignments, and I’d like to understand why,” is the kind of short summary of what you want to talk about that can help you stay on topic.
Bookmarking is a tool for when other issues arise during a conversation. Maybe the person you are talking to brings up a related topic that really should be talked about. Put a verbal bookmark on that topic to return to it. Maybe in talking with your boss about who is getting the choice assignments, she says that she’s worried that your department is seen as a bunch of whiners. You might say, “that’s important and something we should talk about, but right now I want to stay focused on the divvying up of assignments within the department.” Acknowledge the new topic, but stick a pin in it to return to later.
Sometimes the new topic that gets brought up will be more important than what you intended the conversation to be about, in which case you’ll want to bookmark what you were intending to talk about so you can return to it later.
Your Stories Create Your Feelings
The idea that your thoughts and beliefs about a situation (what Crucial Conversations calls your story) create your emotions can seem implausible, but understanding this reality can liberate you from some of your emotional responses (see David Burns’ Feeling Good for more tools on how to challenge your thoughts to change your emotions).
An example might help. Imagine someone cutting you off in traffic. It feels like you immediately get mad, or at least irritated. But before that you had a thought, something like, “that jerk doesn’t care about other people.” Maybe the thought happened so quickly you didn’t notice it, but it was there.
But what if you had seen a small child in the other person’s lane? When they cut you off you would have thought, “I’m so glad they were able to avoid hitting that child!” And instead of feeling mad, you would have felt relief. Same situation (you got cut off), different thought, different emotion.
Even if you thought you saw a child, you would feel relief.
What does this have to do with difficult conversations? If you let go of being wedded to your feelings, and to your thoughts and beliefs about what went on, you open up the possibility of learning new facts, which can create new thoughts and new emotions.
Being open to other’s facts and thoughts is necessary for everyone to explain the facts as they see them, and what stories they derive from those facts. Crucial Conversations calls this the ‘shared pool of meaning’.
Safety First
People will be silent or get angry when they feel unsafe, that is they feel like they are being attacked. Your job is to make others feel safe in the conversation. You don’t do this by sugarcoating the truth or soft peddling things, but by making them understand that you care about them and you are trying to make things better for everyone.
Starting by stating your good intentions is wise. Let the other person know that you are trying to understand more, not to vilify anyone. Another wise move is to try to create a mutual purpose - come to an agreement to understand each other’s position if nothing else.
Apologizing when appropriate can show humility and make the other person feel like you are really in the conversation to reach a deeper understanding, not to win points. This doesn’t mean you should look for any opportunity to apologize, that can make it seem like you are trying to trick the other person into apologizing too, or that you don’t believe in what you are saying.
Speaking so others will listen
It’s easy, when telling your side of the story, to jump to conclusions and start with accusations and blame. Instead you should start with what is the least emotionally laden and the easiest to talk about - the facts. The facts are what you saw and heard, not what you felt or what motivations you suspected of others. If a third party in the room would not agree to what you saw or heard, then it’s a belief, not a fact. “You don’t like me and won’t even talk to me!” is not a fact. “During the group conversation, you did not look or talk to me directly the whole meeting,” is a fact. It is what you saw and heard, and something others could attest to.
Only after you’ve laid out all the facts you noticed is it time to tell your story - to tell your interpretation of why those things happened. Don’t go in full speed, speak tentatively and invite other possibilities. “Since you didn’t look at me during the meeting, I’m worried I’ve offended you without knowing, but maybe your mind was on something else completely.”
Your goal should not be to win, but to encourage more conversation. People will often clam up or become defensive if they think you’ve already decided what something means. Only if you show that you are willing to learn new things, that you are open to the idea that there are facts you missed or interpretations you didn’t think of.
Listen so others will speak
With so many of us learning early in life that a disagreement can rupture a relationship, a lot of people will need help speaking their minds. A lot of people aren’t used to really considering what they think and need help exploring their thoughts and feelings to get at the truth of what they want to share. Here are some tools to help you draw out others’ thoughts.
Simply ask - just asking someone what facts they saw and how that made them feel is an important step and one a lot of people need to feel comfortable sharing. Many of us are used to speaking up and sharing our thoughts, so it can feel weird asking another person directly for their point of view, but it might be just what they need to open up.
Mirror back - tell a person what emotions and feelings you are seeing them display, especially if that doesn’t match what they’re saying. The classic example is when your spouse is obviously upset but says everything is “fine”. Mirroring has you say, “I know you said you’re fine, but it looks to me like you are upset, and I really want to know what you’re thinking.” Going beyond their words and really trying to draw out a person’s experience can do a lot to make them comfortable and willing to share difficult things.
Paraphrasing - summarizing what you’ve heard. This is a tactic I learned from a book called ‘Just Listen’ which is helpful, but is really only one tool - which I misapplied often. Paraphrasing what another person has said shows that you’ve been listening and not just waiting for your chance to speak. If you add a question at the end looking for clarification, it has the potential to move the conversation forward. If you ask, “did I get that right?” you open the door to learning more.
Prime - make a stab at what you think the other person might be feeling/thinking. This is a surprisingly powerful tool. And being wrong can be more effective than being right when you’re trying to draw out what a person is feeling and thinking. I don’t know why, but hearing someone attempt to figure out what’s going on in your head makes you pleased that they’re trying and more willing to share what is actually going on. This is one of the many points in life where making a good, honest attempt is just as good as getting it spot on.
Just Read the Book
If you’re interested in getting better at difficult conversations, then picking up a copy of Crucial Conversations is a great step. I’ve pulled out some of the useful tools in the book here, but it’s dense with actionable suggestions for being better at tough conversations, and I did not get anywhere close to everything in the book. Honestly, any of the major sections of the book could probably be expanded to be its own book, it’s so dense with tips and tactics to have successful conversations. Just get and read the book; everyone can benefit from being better at disagreements. It’s a life skill you owe yourself.
Summary of Crucial Conversations
1: What's a Crucial Conversation
Conversations are crucial when 1) opinions vary, 2) stakes are high, & 3) emotions run strong
Lag time is a major factor in how good the resolution is - the quicker you can bring up and resolve a crucial conversation, the better that resolution is likely to be.
Crucial conversations can be ignored - then people 'act out' the problem. They act poorly bc an underlying issue hasn't been resolved
People often handle crucial conversations poorly -
strong emotions make us fight or fly, rather than think & listen;
we're often caught by suprise, which makes us act poorly bc we don't have time to think;
we have few good role models for hard conversations;
we act in self-defeating ways (passive-aggressive or just aggressive) which creates a loop of anger and resentment.
People who are good at hard conversations (and good at brining them up) are more influential in workplaces
Project failure or success can be predicted by whether specific, relevant crucial conversations are held (are scope and schedule realistic? is someone slacking off? are leaders slacking off?). Holding the proper crucial conversations halved likelihood of project failure.
Learning how to hold crucial conversations can cut in half your chance of unhappiness in or breakup of your romantic relationship
Getting good at Crucial conversations can cut stress & so increase your long-term health
2: Mastering Crucial Conversations
When confronted with an uncomfortable situation, most people take the 'fool's choice':
1. speak up & make someone mad; or
suffer in silence and let other's bad decisions ruin things
It's a fool's choice because there is another way: to be 100% honest & 100% respectful
Being good at a crucial conversation means getting all relevant information in the open
To get people to open up and share their relevant information (into the shared pool of meaning), they must feel safe to do so
Growing the Shared pool of meaning helps b/c more accurate and relevant information lead to better decisions.
Also when people feel like they've been heard, they are more likely to commit to the final decision
without all relevant information, smart people can do really stupid things (like surgeons who work on the wrong body part)
3: Choose your topic
Just because you're talking doesn't mean you're talking about the right thing, making sure you're addressing the right issue is paramount
Crucial conversations are most successful when they focus on one thing, which is hard
Common mistakes in choosing a topic to talk about: we choose the easier topic over the harder one; we choose on the most recent behavior rather than what matters most
Signs you're having the wrong conversation: you feel frustrated & it gets worse as the conversation goes on; you're skeptical at the end of the conversation; you've had the same conversation over & over again.
You may need to have a conversation about the immediate content, what recently happened. If the same thing has happened two or more times, you may need to talk about a pattern, if a problem has persisted for a very long time, you may need to focus on trust, competence and respect in the relationship
Sometimes you need to talk about how you are having conversations, the process. This can happen more often when conversations are happening between people from different cultures, or that are mostly virtual.
Choose what you want to talk about & be able to state it succinctly.
Crucial conversations are rarely just at the content level, but often when faced with a pattern, relationship, or process level conversation a person will take safety in having a content level conversation
If someone brings up something important 'place a bookmark', verbally state that the topic that was brought up is important & that you will return to it later (or if it's more important than what you came to focus on, say that you will come back to that topic later)
4: Start with the Heart
The first problem that usually arises when trying to have a crucial conversation is that our motivations deteriorate - we believe that if other people would change, that would fix the problem
Those who are best at dialogue believe the best way to work on us is to start with _me
It's important to start with the right motives & to stick to them and to avoid the Fool's Choice
When under pressure or we feel attacked we often stop trying to add to the pool of meaning & instead look for ways to win, save face, or punish others
When emotions take over, it's important to ask what you really want - not what you want this second in the hight of your emotions
To stop your emotions from taking over, think first about what your behaviors are telling others you really care about (maybe your sarcasm is telling others you really care about punishing someone else), admit you have this lesser motive, then ask what you really want
It can be helpful to ask 'what do I really want, long term', to get you out of the near-term feelings and desires
Remember what you don't want (like for your relationship to suffer, or to be dishonest), then present your brain with the more complex problem of how you get what you really want & avoid what you don't want (how do you be honest & not hurt your relationship)
5: Master My Stories
How you respond to your own emotions is a major predictor of how you'll do in life.
You create your own emotions, and after you've created an upset emotion, you can either act on the emotion or be acted on by it.
The best at dialogue don't do whatever their emotions push them to do, nor do they suppress their emotions. They think them out - they rethink themselves from an emotional state to one where they are back in control
After we see & hear things, and before we feel emotions, we tell ourselves stories about others' behaviors and motivations & add judgements. These stories create our emotions
Our stories usually give a reason why something is happening, with judgements and attributions
These stories usually happen blindingly fast.
Any set of facts can be used to tell an infinite number of stories (the story that I choose to tell from what I saw & heard is not necessarily the right story & is definitely not the only story).
We can tell different stories (master our stories)
Changing your story is not about letting someone else off the hook, but it is about taking ownership of the energy you're bringing to the conversation.
You want to be able to master your stories b/c often our stories create our realities (I tell myself that everyone is being mean to me, so I'm mean to them, so that causes the people to be mean to me)
Skills for mastering our stories:
Retrace your path - look back over what happened, start with your behavior, then your feelings, then your story and finally what you saw & heard
Notice your behavior - If you're unhappy with an outcome, or you have tough emotions, those can be cues to look back at your story & see if it can be mastered/retold
put your feelings into words - when you can accuratley describe what you're feeling, in it's complexity, then you can put some distance between yourself and your emotions
Our stories can be more accurate or less accurate than other stories. being able to challenge your stories & look for ways to make them more accurate allows you to master your stories
Figuring out new stories should start with the facts, what did you see/hear, what would others agree was seen/heard. What facts were left out of your original story
Three clever stories - stories we often tell ourselves that allow us to feel good about acting poorly:
The victim story - you intentionally ignore your role
The villain story - we ignore someone else's virtues & exaggerate their flaws
Helpless stories - we tell ourselves there is nothing healthy we can do instead
Sometimes our clever stories match reality, but more often we use them to justify our actions or inactions
Clever stories are almost always incomplete - noticing you are telling one to yourself then telling a useful story (one that leads to healthy action, like dialogue) is far better
Changing clever stories
If you are painting yourself a victim, ask yourself about your role in the problem
If you are painting others as villians, ask why a reasonable, rational, decent person would do this thing (or stop worrying about motives so much)
Turn the helpless into the able - ask what you really want
6: Learn to Look
Learning to be good at dialogue is learning to be able to dual-process, notice what is being said, and how it's being said
You need to learn to see when a conversation is turning crucial
You need to make sure everyone feels safe in the conversation
Not the same as comfort
When you feel safe you can really listen to feedback/other people
People who feel unsafe often become silent or lash out
Silence can mean masking - selective showing of true opinions; avoiding - steering away from sensitive subjects; and withdrawing - leaving the conversation completely
Violence can mean controlling - forcing a view; labeling - using labels to dismiss; attacking - trying to make the other person suffer
Try to understand how you react when you feel unsafe
Looking for signs of safety in virtual contexts can be difficult - good idea to try and move things to a higher bandwidth context (email to phone call, phone call to zoom)
7: Make it Safe
People feel unsafe bc of what they believe the intent of the conversation is, rather than it's content
Because of human bias for negativity, you must give proof of your good intent
This is not sugarcoating or avoiding, but stepping away from the content & making things safe before moving back to the content
You must show that you care about their concerns (have a shared goal) & about them
A shared goal, or mutual purpose, means you care about their goals & what they add to the pool of meaning, and that you also share
To care about someone else, mutual respect, you don't have to respect everything about them. Instead of focusing on differences, focus on similarities
4 tools to make people feel safe:
Share your good intent - start with your good intent (I want to understand better...)
apologize when appropriate - a sincere apology must also mean a change of heart - your motives must change
Contrast to fix misunderstanding - I don't want to criticize you, I know you've got a lot on your plate. I want to share our concerns
Create a mutual purpose
commit to seeking mutual purpose - we must be open to not being 100% right
Work at finding the purpose behind what the other person is saying
Discover/invent a share goal/mutual purpose - focus on longer term goals
Sharing good intent is more important in email/written communication bc it's so easy to read bad intent into email.
Try writing an email twice, once to get your content across, and re-write it thinking about the other person reading it & how they may look/think when reading it
8: State my Path
You must have confidence, humility and skill to be able to speak your mind completely & be completely respectful and make others feel safe.
(STATE) To share your side completely:
Share your facts
Tell your story
Ask for other's paths
Talk tentatively
Encourage testing
Share your facts - facts are rarely controversial, and they lay the foundation for the conversation. Your facts are not the facts, be open to new facts.
Tell your story - Tell our story (how you interpreted the facts) after establishing facts. To do otherwise will often make people feel unsafe. Tell you story as a possible story/interpretation of the facts, but do not apologize for your story. You must share your interpretation of what is happening/happened for the other person to understand why you care about this (facts alone are rarely enough).
Ask for other’s path (the facts they saw/heard, the story they came upone from them, the emotions they then felt, and what that led them to do) You want more in the ‘shared pool of meaning’ so ask for what others saw/thought/felt/did.
Talk tentatively - this means talking like your story is just one possible story, not the only possible story. This helps add to the pool of meaning bc it invites others to add more possible stories. Aiming for openness not complete uncertainty (unless you really are completely uncertain)
Encourage Testing - you can be very strong in expressing your opinion if you are equally strong in encouraging others to challenge it. You should invite opposing views and play devil’s advocate to your own story.
When you don’t follow STATE, when you feel you are so right that you should be allowed to play tricks to prove you’re right, then you should re-check your intent.
9: Explore Other’s Paths
Others will often turn to silence or violence (yelling, blowing up) even if you follow what is suggested above. You will need to help them explore their path (what they saw/believed/felt/did)
Ask why they are feeling unsafe (clamming up or blowing up), be curious. Be patient, it may take a while for someone to get through a possible adrenaline jolt.
Use AMPP to encourage others to share their path - Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime.
Ask them about what they are thinking/feeling
Mirror - tell them what emotions you are seeing them display, even if it doesn’t match their words
Paraphrasing back what you’ve heard can make a person feel heard & safer
Prime - make a stab at what you think the other person might be feeling/thinking.
If at this point the other person is still silent/angry, it might be best to back off
What if you disagree (ABC)
Agree - point out all the stuff you agree about
Build - build on what the other person said “Very true, and…” rather than saying they’re wrong
Compare - rather than saying the other person is wrong, show how you think you two differ
Setting up expectations that you will listen to them, then they should listen to you at the beginning of the conversation.
10: Retake your Pen
You are in control of how you think about yourself. What other people say only hurts you if you decide it should. Don’t let your self-worth rest in what other people think/say.
“If you live by compliments, you’ll die by criticism” Cornelius Lindsey
Feedback only hurst if it threatens our sense of safety or our sense of worth
To deal with difficult feedback, use CURE
Collect yourself - deep breathing. naming your feelings
Understand - being curious can interrupt our feelings of personalizing criticism
Recover - take some time/distance if you need. Say “I’ll think on that, it’s important to me to get this right, and I’ll need some time”
Engage - Finally, think about what you were told.
11: Move to Action
Even if you’ve done everything above well, there are still potential pitfalls around moving to action/decision-making
How are decisions going to be made? & does a decision actually get made?
How are decisions going to be made?
When you’re in a position of authority (leader/parent) you decide who decides
When no clear authority, you need to to discuss how a decision is going to be made:
Command - one person makes the decision w out consulting others. This happens a lot b/c of the efficiency
Consult - One person is going to decide, but they invite others to influence them beforehand
Vote - good when there are several decent decisions
Consensus - everyone talks until everyone agrees. Can take tons of time, should be reserved for high-stakes & complex issues or when you need complete buy-in from everyone
Really important to say what kind of decision is going to be made (a lot of people will think that a consult is a consensus decision - best to spell out that this is a consult situation first)
Not every crucial conversation is going to end with a plan for action. Complex discussions may end in a commitment (maybe to talk again). Decisions & commitments should says
Who,
is doing What,
When
& how you will follow up
(for who - ‘we’ means no one. Specific people need to be given specific jobs).
Write stuff down! Details of the conclusions, decisions & assignments.
12: Yeah, but (Advice for Tough cases)
goes over cases like possible sexual harassment & really sensitive people
not overt harassment, but person does not like it → usually works if you can state things respectfully & privately. If that doesn’t work go to hr
highly sensative spouse → proper STATE your path & use contrasting
I don’t trust the person → focus on trust around the issue at hand, not the person in genearl
subordinate shows no initiative → focus on pattern, but do give specific examples of where the person tried one thing then gave up. Tell them you are raising the bar
person issues like hygiene → use contrasting to say you don’t want to hurt feelings and are intending to be helpful
13: Putting it all together
This book is full of potential new habits to learn. It’s a lot
One way to get better at dialogue is to pick on skill at a time and get better at it.
Another way is to focus on principles, authors say two main principles of the book tend to help people:
Noticing & stating when you’re out of dialogue (when someone has gone silent or is violent)
Build safety. generate evidence that you care about the other’s interests & that you respect them
you don’t need to be perfect to make progress