Crucial Conversations

I knew I was in trouble when I read the words “go back to the book again, learn some more and apply your new learnings”. Deep thinking was not even a phrase I had thought about in at least two years (since my last Dr. Bill class). Obviously, this book was hand picked for a reason to allow the process of deep CRITICAL thinking to take place. Go back and apply what you have learned…. learn more…….

The beginning of the book dives into what is critical communications? Does it make a difference and honestly who cares? Specifically however, points out that we as a society will avoid a conversation the more important and or critical it becomes regardless if this is in a personal, business and or health situation. If we decide to take on a crucial conversation we will handle in one of three ways: avoid it, face it and handle it poorly or face it and handle it well. As with most human nature we will always take the path of least resistance.

Avoidance and the problem will go away, I have exhibited this skill more than once in my personal and professional life. More specially my separation from Alltel. I confronted my vice president on how I felt our market was performing as well as what I thought the changes could be to improve the workforce and retain our employees. I was proud of myself for sticking up for what I believe in however, I do now realize that I avoided the issue until absolutely the last minute, faced it but, overall handled it poorly. I did use terms and phrases that did not exhibit a shared environment of ideas. In retrospect, I also feel this was a direct correlation of past meeting with her as well as previous leaders. Was I simply using skills I had learned in the past and possibly never been exposed to a person who could deal with crucial conversation naturally?

Moving on into the book the authors combined several years of data and shadowing experiences to find what skills make a person good with tough, critical conversations. Through the research they realized that the common skills in the “best” performers could be learned. These skills were exhibited by people that were not always management, not necessarily born